Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Protestant-Catholic relationship has hardly been an untroubled one. And yet, the possibilities for various layers of reconciliation are better then at any time since the original schism 500 years ago. One of the symbols for the church that is used in Scripture is the church as a household (Ephesians…
Despite the layers of wiping, covering, and ransoming during the Day of Recoverings, true unity still has not been achieved. Divorce is still possible; God still might leave his people. Thus the Day of Recoverings must be repeated every year. The perpetual expression of unity between God and man in…
The events of Leviticus 16 are commonly known as “The Day of Atonement,” from the Hebrew phrase yom hakippurim, in Leviticus 23:27. However, it would be more accurate to say, “The Day of Atonements,” [i] since the word is plural. The plurality primarily relates to 16:33, which states five different…
Mary Douglas, against the common notion that primitive religious rituals were illogical and random asserts, “The analysis of ritual symbolism cannot begin until we recognize ritual as an attempt to create and maintain a particular culture … Any culture is a series of structures which comprise social forms, values, cosmology,…
Jesus holds seven stars. They are the angels of the seven churches (Revelation 1:20). For ancient readers and hearers, "seven stars" would evoke a number of associations - the seven planets, the seven stars of Ursa Major, and the seven stars that make up the Pleiades. The last makes a…
When he first arrives in Harran, at Paddan-Aram, the home of Laban his uncle, Jacob sees a well. Wells are mentioned frequently in Genesis. Twice Hagar finds a well in the wilderness (Genesis 16:14; 21:19). Philistines seize Abraham’s well (21:22-34), and Abraham’s chief servant finds a wife for Isaac at…
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Baudrillard sounds like a nut when he says that we are now living in a hyperreal world, a virtual world. But there is certainly something to it. We’re still physical creatures, of course, surrounded by physical objects, and that doesn’t change when we get strapped in for some virtual experience.…
Postmodernity unleashes fear, Bauman says: “Modernity was a continuous and uncompromising effort to fill or to cover up the void; the modern mentality held a stern belief that the job can be done - if not today then tomorrow. The sin of postmodernity is to abandon the effort and to…
Johannes Fabian argues in his Time and the Other that “geopolitics has its ideological foundations in chronopolitics.” Bauman summarizes the argument: “The modern perspective ‘denied coevality’ to any form of life different from its own; it construed the Other of itself as ‘living in another time.’ The allochronic distancing device…
In his recent history of slavery in the New World, David Brion Davis records some surprising facts about American slavery. Prior to 1820, for instance, African slaves were more numerous than European settlers by a ratio of 5 to 1. About 5-6 percent of slaves in the Western hemisphere were…
In his history of the idea of toleration, the late A.J. Conyers summarizes the arguments of Robert P. Kraynak on the development of Locke’s thought on religious toleration. The puzzle is this: Locke’s early works are absolutist in a Hobbesian vein, invoking the supreme magistrate’s power to oversee religion for…
Zbigniew Herbert writes in a poem entitled “Mr Cogito and Pop” of a visit to a concert. “Mr Cogito,” a recurring character in Herbert’s poems, reflects on the “aesthetics of noise” and offers some penetrating observations on the character of contemporary pop music: “to be a god means to hurl…
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