Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A couple years ago, I read Paul Graham’s ruminations on higher- and lower-level languages in Hackers and Painters . Although he’s talking about computer languages, his insights have bearing on biblical language and hermeneutics. So bear with me while I lay out some of the basic points, and then we’ll…
Toward the end of the Revelation, John sees a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The old created order in Adam has passed away, and the new order under the lordship of Jesus has been established. Within this new creation John also sees “the holy city, the…
I have been talking with you about integration—an elusive, allusive, word, pregnant with something we long for. I have suggested that what might be rightly a natural longing has been exacerbated by our own modern Western milieu’s dominating devotion to bits and bytes, a prevailing sense of fragmentation. Fragmentation is…
Sunday morning found me kneeling at the foot of my bed, trembling, pebbles of sweat leaping off the edge of my brow and nose, and hitting the floor in front of me, but not from piety was I procumbent; though as a minister for over a decade, I had made…
In April of this year, President Trump issued a zero-tolerance border policy that separated families, specifically children from their parents who had crossed the USA/Mexico border be it illegally or as asylum seekers . In mid-June, Trump dropped this policy of splitting up families, however there are still children who…
During the Middle Ages, Joseph, the husband of Mary, was the butt of many jokes. Medieval theater and art often depicted him as something of a buffoon, decidedly marginal to the gospel story. In part, this was the unfortunate obverse of the exaltation of Mary; any man would suffer by…
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Following John McWhorter, I wrote recently about the religion of Antiracism . Tara Isabella Burton calls it the religion of social justice. We're talking about much the same thing, a novel religion that is a shadow form of Christian orthodoxy. "Social justice is a religion," she writes in Strange Rites…
Exodus 28 is organized outside-in, first describing the visible, exterior portions of the high priest's robes and then the hidden or partially hidden underclothes. There's also a movement upward, from torso to head. The passage is crowned with a description of Aaron's golden crown. The crown is called a tziytz…
When will the tumult die down and things get back to 2019-era normal? Maybe never. A pandemic that might have united the United States has divided us further. Demonstrations sparked by a real abuse of power have driven some policemen from the streets. While everyone was looking the other way,…
There are at least two sorts of hopeless Christians these days. One sort despairs as they survey America's history of abuse of blacks, the evils and hypocrisies of slavery and Jim Crow, the terror of lynchings and bombings and the Klan, the church's appalling racist theology. Will America ever find…
Yahweh's design for Aaron's robes in Exodus 28 moves from outside in, from the ephod and attached breastpiece (28:6-30) to the robe beneath the ephod (28:31-35) to the tunic (28:39) and underwear breeches (28:42-43). Verses 36-38 interrupt the movement with a description of the high priest's head gear. Otherwise, the…
Aaron’s breastpiece ( chosen ) is woven of gold, colored wool thread, and linen, square like. the Holy of Holies (Exodus 28:15). It’s a span in length and a span in width, folded double to form a pouch (Exodus 28:16), and attached to the ephod by gold rings and chains…
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