Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Although the events are, of course, not perfectly parallel, Luke in his gospel intends us to connect Jesus’ birth from the womb and His re-birth from the tomb. Luke 1:27 introduces us to Joseph and in verse 30 we learn that his betrothed wife was named Mary. An angel appeared…
The apostle Matthew is also known as Levi son of Alphaeus. While not much is said about this man, the few things that are told us are significant. Matthew in Greek is Matthaios and comes from the Hebrew name Mattithiah, or Mattith-Yah, "Gift of Yah(weh)." Matthew’s other name is Levi,…
Theologians often speak of "special" and "general" revelation, or of "natural" and "supernatural" revelation, or of "word" and "deed" revelation. While there are many worthwhile insights in these discussions, particularly in the discussions in Cornelius Van Til’s Introduction to Systematic Theology , I have not found any that satisfied my…
Ezekiel’s 430 Years In Ezekiel 4, the prophet is told to begin his ministry by setting up a model of Jerusalem and lying on his side and prophesying against it. He is to do this for 430 days, a day for a year. 390 days are against "Israel," and 40…
The Feast of Ingathering in the seventh month of the Sinaitic calendar is also called the Feast of Sukkoth, of Booths, also called Feast of Tabernacles. I have usually called it by that last phrase, and it is the most common today; but there is a problem: A tabernacle is…
The End of Jehoiakim’s Reign We have seen that Jehoiakim rejected Jeremiah’s prophetic warnings at the beginning of his reign. Let us now make a year-by-year survey of his reign down to its end. In the spring of 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish. In the summer, he…
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Z ygmunt Bauman thinks we are awash in nostalgia. We have created a Retrotopia . Nostalgia, he argues, “is but one member of the rather extended family of affectionate relationship with an ‘elsewhere.'” Thus retrotopia shares characteristics with utopian inspirations and progressive projects, the main difference being that the Angel…
“T here's a new ‘sacred' in town,” write Juan and Stacey Floyd-Thomas in The Altars Where We Worship . It's not the old sacred of church, word, sacrament. They write, “Statistics reveal a startling gap between confession and practice in American religion. Slightly more than 70 percent of Americans in…
P atrick Deneen ( Democratic Faith , xiv) tells the story of the desacralization of the Cathedral of Saint Genevieve in 1791. The national assembly decided to “rededicate the basilica as a resting place for France’s revolutionary heroes. Above its doors were carved the words, ‘Aux grands hommes la Patrie…
I n his Aesthetics of Architecture , Roger Scruton summarizes RG Collingwood's distinction between art and craft. It has a surface plausibility: “Initially it seems quite reasonable to distinguish the attitude of the craftsman—who aims at a certain result and does what he can to achieve it—from that of the…
I n his book, Disenchanted Night , Wolfgang Schivelbusch considers the difference between lighting by torches and lighting with candles. With the torch, “the site of combustion and the fuel are one and the same thing, while in the candle they are clearly separated. From now on the wick acts…
H esiod's “Hymn to Hekate” seems to interrupt the Theogony to no good purpose. Hekate isn't a major goddess, and the hymn doesn't seem to be integrated into the rest of the poem. In her forthcoming bilingual edition of Hesiod's poems, Kimberly Johnson argues that “Hekate is integral to the…
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