Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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Paul Fiddes ( The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) , 7) repeats a truism when he writes, “Poetic metaphor and narrative rejoice in ambiguity and the opening up of multiple meaning; doctrine will always seek to reduce to concepts the images and stories upon…
Rosenstock-Huessy ( The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun (The Cloister Library) , 130) note that language, like all life, deteriorates naturally “from inspiration to routine”: “Every time we speak we eiyther renew or cheapen the words we use.” Christian language is no exception: “Christian language can be abused…
Repetition is not itself bad, Rosenstock-Huessy says ( The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun (The Cloister Library) , 80-1): “Life itself rests on a certain balance between recurrent and novel processes; the former are our fixed capital investment, the latter our free range of choice, selection, change, at…
Exodus 28:32-33: Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Thus they shall eat those things by which atonement was made at their ordination and consecration; but a layman shall not…
You are priests, ordained to priesthood by baptism, which united you to Jesus Christ, the High Priest of a priestly community. When Aaron and his sons were ordained, Moses smeared blood on their right ear lobes, their right thumbs, their right bog toes. Their ears, hands, and feet became holy…
In his study of The Passions of Christ in High-Medieval Thought: An Essay on Christological Development (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) , Kevin Madigan concludes that on the issues of the human passions of Christ the scholastic theologians did not unpack what was implicit in patristic Christological. Rather, “high-medieval christological…
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