Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Not long ago, I heard these statistics about New York City: New York City is in $100 billion in debt. 20% of all NYC residents are on food stamps, which cost $250 million a month. 5% of NYC population are on disability, costing $252 million a month. Other assistance costs…
1. All political power is ambivalent. Vertical violence of “the state” tends to limit horizontal and contested power between people and between tribes. “The State” brings new oppression, but also a measure of new peace and unity. 2. All political formations are ambiguous like this: a strong family conquers weaker…
Gnosticism by any other name would smell the same. But does the church have much of a theological sense of smell, these days, when it comes to the seductions of virtuality in our worshipping communities? Social isolation during a global pandemic makes good public health sense, but whether church should…
It is a remarkable thing, you know, this thing called priority. Just a few weeks ago, religious leaders were boldly asserting in their high-dollar online videos that it was too dangerous to return to worship and that we needed to listen to our political and health leaders. "They are the…
Somewhere in the city of Jerusalem on a rooftop just a few years after the ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost. . . ". . . and just when are you guys going to live up to your ‘Sons of Thunder’ reputation? Huh? A lot…
In my book, Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men ( Amazon , Kindle ) I mention that Solomon portrays wisdom as a woman. But I don’t ask (or answer!) why he did so. Solomon uses the figure of Lady Wisdom without apology or explanation: Wisdom cries aloud in the street,…
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What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens? The worship of Greece with the worship of the temple? Quite a lot, in fact, argues David Biale in Blood and Belief (26): “Greek and Israelite sacrificial customs turn out to have been more similar to each other than the Israelite was to…
David Biale ( Blood and Belief ) argues that menstrual blood is not defiling because it is associated with death (as Jacob Milgrom, among others, argues). After all, menstrual blood doesn’t mean a woman is dying but that she is fertile. On the other hand, the sorts of bleeding that…
Durkheim said that “society” was the god to whom primitive peoples sacrificed, the totem standing in for the clan for which it served as totem. We might say, But of course. As FS Naiden ( Smoke Signals for the Gods , 277) has recently pointed out, by the time of…
John M. Lundquist argues that ancient temples were “associated with the realm of the dead, the underworld, the afterlife, the grave.” He states further: “The unifying feature here is the rites and worship of ancestors. The temple is the link between this world and the next. It has been called…
Paul says that everything that is in the light, everything that becomes visible, is light (Ephesians 5). He is writing about the light of the Father, Jesus, or the Spirit. If we are in that light, we ourselves become lights. But the claim is strictly true: Everything that the light…
John Lundquist claims that secrecy is one of the features of temples and temple rituals in the ancient world. All temples are sacred space, which means secret space, off-limits to any but the authorized. He cites Exodus 19:12-13, 21-24 in support. This is certainly true of ancient temples in general,…
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