Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a recent article in Biblical Horizons , I argued that the imagery of James 1:21 alludes to baptism, and particularly to baptism as an ordination and incorporation into the holy priesthood. This understanding of baptism as ordination to priesthood is not, I have since discovered, original, but in fact…
He will be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace will be between the two of them (Zechariah 6:13b). A prime difficulty in the interpretation of this verse is the antecedent of the pronoun "them." A number of alternatives have been offered. Some suggest that the "two"…
Like certain kinds of music, the unchanging rhythm of Aquinas's Summa gets into your bones. Read a few sections and it begins to run through your head. You start drumming your fingers, humming, swaying gently to the rhythm of Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, “It seems-On the contrary-I answer.” The only…
The Book of Revelation is a gold mine of liturgical information. The various hymns and exclamations in Revelation have always been used in Christian worship. As I have been studying Revelation this year, it occurred to me that make a complete hymn out of the various hymns in the book.…
In the book of Revelation we find a triad of Strong Angels, and another triad of Other Angels. The purpose of this essay is to explore the Biblical background of these two sets, and thus fill out their meaning. The first triad of angels we encounter in the Bible comes…
In Revelation, the term aggelos means messenger, of course, but with a special emphasis on messenger as covenant administrator. This is immediately obvious from the fact that the angels are constantly acting to enforce the covenant one way or another: sealing people, bringing judgment, calling for repentance, etc. They are…
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Martyrdom is the true resistance to the powers and principalities that rule in heavenly places. Witnesses broke the old creation order. Martyrs shattered the Roman world, so that God’s throne was set up in Europe and began shaking things. Early Christians were witnesses against the religious foundations of Rome. Rome…
There were, of course, varieties of Enlightenment, some more favorable to tradition than others, but what Jonathan Israel has called the “ Radical Enlightenment ” won, and they were the most hostile to traditional social and political forms. The Radical Enlightenment was committed to absolute freedom - from the past,…
God speaks and light appears. He separates light and darkness, assigns names to each, and judges the whole to be good. Next day, He’s at it again, speaking, separating, assessing, judging. And so it goes throughout the days of creation: With an insistent, incantatory rhythm, God speaks, sees, names, judges.…
Jean-Marie Schaeffer ( Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger (New French Thought Series) has a blast pointing out the contradictions in Kant’s aesthetics. Most of them arise from Kant’s insistence that the judgment of taste is founded on “the form of a finality” that…
John Rawls begins his Theory of Justice with what he describes as a "standard" social-scientific concept of rationality: "a rational person is thought to have a coherent set of preferences between the options open to him. He ranks these options according to how well they further his purposes; he follows…
Ben Cobley's The Tribe is a detailed, sobering examination of the left-liberal system of identity politics. Cobley, a leftwing journalist, describes a diversity "system." The system is founded on a division of the population between favored and unfavored groups, identified by race, sex and sexual orientation, age, religion, class, wealth,…
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