Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(continued from previous issue) Between 30 and 50 What did the Levites do between age 30 and 50? Numbers 4 shows us that they carried the house of God on their shoulders. Lifting up the Lord is an image of worship in the Bible, and David’s restructuring of the Levites…
When God created the world, He created two lands: the Throne-land of Eden (entered through the sanctuary-garden, the Garden of Eden), and the Outlying Lands, such as the lands of Havilah and Cush. This essentially bi-polar world is the world of the Old Creation, and it continued to exist until…
Color is inescapable, except for those who are color blind. In our church architecture, we either employ color schemes that are helpful to worship, or we employ color schemes that are not helpful. Of course, this assertion merely begs the question: What color schemes are most helpful. God showed interest…
As I noted in an earlier article in Rite Reasons , the Church Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine all claimed that baptism inducts the baptized person into membership in the royal priesthood of the church, and Thomas Aquinas said that baptism, by imprinting an indelible “character” on the soul, confers…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
In my Preliminary Commentary on Daniel , which many of you have obtained, I argued in chapter 13 that the four monsters called up from the sea by the evangelistic work of the four winds (the saints) represented the deep hatred of God that evangelistic work brings to the fore…
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Modernity, especially as theorized in modern economics, treats work as "instrumental to the acquisition of goods" (Stephen Marglin, The Dismal Science , 44). Modernity "closes off thinking of hard work as something other than drudgery" (43). As a counterpoint, Marglin calls attention to work in Amish communities: "In physical terms,…
"The Father is greater than I," says Jesus (John 14:28). Eunomius uses this to prove the ontological interiority of the Son. Basil of Caesarea rejects that reading, of course. But his way of rejecting it is worth attending to. He doesn't claim that Jesus is talking about His inferiority as…
Ian Hunter argues that "secularization" as "transition from divine reverencing to rational autonomy" didn't happen during the centuries after Reformation. Confessional Christianity didn't disappear but was more deeply entrenched during that time. "Secular" referred not to the imposition or incursion of rational atheism but to the formation of purely political…
Is God simple? Christian theologians from the Cappadocians to Aquinas and beyond said Yes. But we need to probe this consensus: Did they mean the same thing by saying Yes? Andrew Radde-Gallwitz says No ( Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity ). What is…
In a debunking paper on "secularization" and the "secular," Ian Hunter argues that "nobody in early modernity spoke of secularization in terms of a transition from divine reverencing to rational autonomy, but also that there is no evidence of such a transition taking place there and, further, that there is…
Richard Spady's eye-opening piece in First Things examines the consequences that follow when economics becomes an ideology, that is, when economics "willfully projects its own first principles on its subject matter and actively seeks, perhaps unconsciously, material changes to bring social realities into conformity with these first principles." He offers…
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