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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E xplaining the numerological structure of Psalm 72, C. J. Labuschagne points out that the Psalm has 17 verses and adds, “The 17-word doxology, together with its 2-word conclusion . . . ‘Amen, Amen' (vs. 18-19), brings the total number of words of the entire poem up to 156 (6…
G od is the Father of precipitation, Job says (Job 38:25–30). Rain is filial, the Father’s nourishing gift to the world. The imagery appears elsewhere. The righteous king is “like rain upon the mown grass” (Psalm 72:6), and the king’s “favor is like a cloud with the spring rain” (Proverbs…
A t ESPN , Elaine Teng states the obvious: San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg “Pop” Popovich has an unequalled record of success. Since he took over the Spurs twenty years ago, his teams have never failed to make the playoffs. In all sports, the closest contender is Pittsburgh's NHL Penguins,…
L uigino Bruni ( The Wound and the Blessing ) argues that “society without markets and contracts cannot be civil.” Without markets “it is not mutual love that usually takes their place; the void left without contracts is frequently filled by power relationships in which the strongest exploit the weakest.”…
R evisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence . The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is…
I n an essay on the “limits of the state,” Timothy Mitchell tests several theories of the state and finds them wanting. Shortly after World War II, American political scientists generally abandoned the concept of the state “as a concept too vague and too narrow to be the basis of…
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