Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This year’s Biblical Horizons conference was another great success and we would like to thank all those who were involved by helping out with the catering or opening up their homes to attendees and speakers. The talks, open-ended as they were, offered a fresh perspective and food for thought on…
I find myself often rehearsing conversations with my children. When the house is quiet in the late evening, and I'm standing in front of a pile of soapy dishes, I think about what I am going to say to them in certain situations. When I am driving in the car,…
In Matthew 24:29 , Jesus employs “cosmic language,” signs in the sun, moon and stars, to predict the imminent end of the Old Covenant. His first-century audience would have recognized His allusion to the prophecy against Babylon in Isaiah 13 and understood His discourse as a condemnation of Jerusalem as…
The Enthroned One speaks to John (Revelation 21:6): “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.” It's a little theology proper. For starters, there's the Greek version of…
In reading about how we got into this mess, I came across a very interesting couple of paragraphs that I think the church could learn from if we are going to counter the Obergefell ruling. Prior to 2009, same sex “marriage” had gone to the ballot box thirty-one times in…
In my previous essay on Macbeth , I pointed out that Shakespeare rewrote Scottish history to construct a play which points to Adam’s Fall — a man and a woman tempted by devils to steal the throne and become like gods. It is hard to imagine anyone in Shakespeare’s day…
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In various works, Rene Girard analyzes the "underground" of Dostoevsky, most elaborately presented in Notes from Underground . The underground is both a psychology and a metaphysics. The psychology arises from the dynamics of mimesis and rivalry that are Girard's key themes, which lead to alienation of frustrated resentment, ressentiment…
Alan Jacobs has recently ( How To Think ) used CS Lewis’s essay on the “Inner Ring” to explain what has happened to political discourse in the US. Lewis began his essay by citing a passage from Tolstoy, which revealed an informal hierarchy, an “inner ring,” within the overt organizational…
A brief overview of key elements of the thought of Rene Girard. Mimetic desire . Desire isn’t individual; it doesn’t emerge from isolated individuals. It’s mimetic. We desire what we see others desiring. This is the basis for the advertising industry; it’s obvious in any day care center, when children…
A brief, sketchy outline applying the quadriga to various topics of Leviticus . The quadriga. Fourfold sense: Literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogical. Examples: Jerusalem; David and Goliath. Strengths *Implies a Christology, an ecclesiology, an ethics, and an eschatology *Allegory and tropology. *Faith, hope, love built into hermeneutical. Quadrigizing the sanctuary. Literal…
With Saudi Arabia in the news following the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi, there's an opening for rethinking the US relation with Saudi. The following is an excerpt from my 2012 Between Babel and Beast . Numbers and details may be somewhat outdated, but the main points stand. In August…
Gotta love Mary Midgley. She died on October 10 of this year, a month after her 99th birthday. To the end, she did philosophy with a rare degree of common sense and wit. She begins The Myths We Live By , published when she was a mere octogenarian, by explaining…
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