Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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In his sociological history of Christian worship, Martin Stringer examines the process of “Christianization” in the early church as a process of Christian colonization of space. Among other things, he notes that “Christian architecture differed in a number of significant ways from the religious architecture of pagan religions. Most pagan…
In his social history of Christian liturgy, Lutheran liturgist Frank Senn describes the invention of the pax board in England during the 13th century: “This popular practice was welcomed by the clergy and disseminated throughout Christendom by the Franciscans. The pax board was a cross or painted picture of Christ,…
INTRODUCTION Raising children is a way of throwing out a line to the future. It is inherently an act of faith, an effort to outlive ourselves. That’s true of all parenting. But Christian parents need to exercise the full range of theological virtues: faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13).…
In 1536, nearly twenty years after Luther posted the 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, Pope Paul III announced a plan to call a general council to deal with the issues raised by Luther and other Reformers. Despite being excommunicated by the Catholic church a decade earlier, Luther…
“When we were boys,” an editor lamented, “boys had to do a little work in school. They were not coaxed; they were hammered. Spelling, writing, and arithmetic were not electives, and you had to learn. In these more fortunate times, elementary education has become in many places a vaudeville show.…
According to Verene, Vico’s emphasis on child psychology makes him “the authentic precursor of Rousseau” and also a forerunner of Romanticism: “Misleading as may be the view that Vico was an outright pre-Romanticist, there is a whole aspect of the German Romantic movement of which he seems to have been…
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