Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…
The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…
Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…
The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…
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Departures are funny things in the Bible. No one ever completely leaves. Moses dies, but Joshua, a new Moses, replaces him. Elijah flies to heaven in a chariot of fire, but Elisha is left behind, filled with the spirit of Elijah. Jesus says, I am going away, and in the…
Since 1900, it’s been unavailable but before that, “Christ’s foreskin was one of the most popular relics in Christendom” (David Farley, AN Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town ) Catherine of Siena said she wore the foreskin as a wedding ring, being a…
Users of LSD during the 60s were not just out for a joy ride. They were the vanguard of a new race. Jay Stevens says ( Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream , xiii-xiv): “the hippies were an attempt to push evolution, to jump the species toward a higher…
The point has been made by many, but few have made it as concisely as Ivan Illich in Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health . Writing in the 1970s, he noted that “during the last century doctors have affected epidemics no more profoundly than did priests during earlier times. Epidemics…
We think science is objective. But scientific objectivity has a history, and is a fairly recent arrival as a scientific aspiration. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison observe in Objectivity (17), “Objectivity has not always define science. Nor is objectivity the same as truth or certainty, and it is younger than…
American marriage is unique, argues Andrew Cherlin ( The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today , 9-10), because American marriage marries individualism and marriage: “Family life in America comprises both cultural models - marriage and individualism. Each is part of the cultural tool kit .…
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