Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We lost Crimea. That is very clear. Putin proved he was not lying when he said he would place women and children ahead of his soldiers to storm Ukrainian military bases. Russian soldiers did exactly that with women (some who volunteered and some who were forced). Russia now occupies all…
Sound is an indicator of life and energy. “Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production to exist at all.” Things don’t have to be alive to make themselves visible, and “a primitive hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an elephant when the…
In the most famous section of his best-known novel, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov brings forward his case against God. He opens with a horrific litany of outrages against children. Turkish soldiers make a baby laugh and then shoot a pistol into his face. A little girl is beaten, thrashed, kicked by…
At the heart of Esther Lightcap Meek's splendid Little Manual for Knowing is a concept she picked up from Michael Polanyi, "subsidiary-focal integration." The concept begins from the insight that all our knowing, all our experience, is double. We focus on something, but we are capable of "indwelling" that focal…
Jesus promises the overcomers of Pergamum "hidden manna" and a "white stone." The hidden manna is often linked with the manna stashed away in the ark of the covenant. The white stone has proved more elusive. Exodus tells us that manna was white (Exodus 16:31) and like bdellium (Numbers 11:7),…
Leviticus 23 begins with a reference to “Yahweh’s appointed times” ( mo’ade-YHWH ). Mo’ed is the common term for the feasts of Israel. A few dimensions to this term. First, it means “appointed time” or “designated time.” It is a time set by Yahweh. Yahweh has claimed certain times as…
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Leviticus is the oilest book of the Bible. The Hebrew shemen is used 42 times (6 x 7); the closest competitor is Numbers, with 34 uses. The uses of shemen are clustered. Leviticus 2 uses the word 9 times, all with reference to the preparation of the tribute offering (…
Why do so many Egyptian statues have broken noses? Julia Wolkoff summarizes the answer of Brooklyn Museum curator Edward Bleiberg. Noses protrude, and so are more apt to be knocked off accidentally, but the pattern is too consistent to be accident. Erosion could account for some, but not all. Bleiberg…
Some snippets from Philip Turner's Christian Ethics and the Church . The premise of Turner's book is well summarized by a passage he quotes from Sabina Lovibond's Ethical Formation : "The ethical, let us say, pertains to what people learn to value through immersion in a community acquainted with ideas…
Levitical offerings send a "soothing aroma" ( reyach nichoach ) to Yahweh. Israel needs to produce good smells because her sin is noxious to Yahweh. When Israel rebels, His "nose burns." By slaughtering a substitute animal and turing it to smoke, Israel soothes Yahweh's hot nose. But that can't be…
“Spiritual reading” is usually associated with patristic, monastic, and medieval modes of reading. It's fruitful, however, to shift the focus and ask what the Spirit has to do with our reading. The Spirit is the enlivening breath of God, the water of God who makes us into a fruitful garden.…
Liberalism is "in origin primarily a refusal of ecclesial power." So write John Milbank and Adrian Pabst ( Politics of Virtue , 31). In refusing ecclesial power, early modern political theorists renounced the arrangement of Latin Christendom. The "first polity knowing no bounds and truly based upon the rule of…
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