Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
10. Do not slander [tattle on] a slave to his master, Lest he curse [denounce] you and you be found guilty. The Sojourner of Proverbs 30 is a humble man. He makes this clear in verses 2-4, where he says that he is stupider than anyone else on earth, but…
In retrospect and at first glance, many of the issues that have plagued and divided the Church seem incredibly trivial. The Quartodecimians were branded as heretics for celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan. One of the issues that divided the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054 was the kind of bread…
The gifts of the wise men have been commonly interpreted as royal gifts to the infant King of the Jews. Each of the three gifts is, indeed, connected with kings and kingship in Scripture. The Lord’s anointed is pictured wearing a crown of gold in Psalm 21:3, and the gold…
The Church is not in good shape. Nearly every week we hear about another prominent Christian leader who has fallen into scandalous sin. Many shepherds feed their flocks a diet of baby food, if not outright poison. Few Churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper regularly, and few Christians appreciate its importance.…
Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?"…
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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Drawing on the work of Oliver O'Donovan, Jamie Smith offers a critique of natural law as an adequate grounding for political theology. Positively, Smith argues that “he public task of the church is not just to remind the world of what it (allegedly) already knows (by ‘natural' reason), but to…
At the beginning of his Silence and Praise , Ryan Hansen summarizes several of the recent approaches to understanding the cosmology of the book of Revelation. The most popular today borrows from the sociology of knowledge to suggest that John's writing creates a “symbolic universe” or “worldview” for his readers.…
The emphasis on chastity, virginity, and lack of defilement from women does not have to do with misogyny or asceticism. In biblical perspective, it means that this is both a liturgical and a military assembly. When Israel arrived at Sinai, the men had to keep themselves from women so as…
In his Gift and the Unity of Being , Antonio Lopez claims that “Christ's kenotic gift of self restores unity with God. The redemption of the gift allows man to see that unity with God is possible and that it generates a whole that is greater than its parts. St.…
Douglas Rushkoff's Nothing Sacred is rather all over the place (as one might say if one had a thickly superior British accent). The Judaism he favors isn't a “traditional community with concrete values and well-defined rules” (1) but one that “stresses transparency, open-ended inquiry, assimilation of the foreign, and a…
Explaining the power of liturgical habit, Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) offers writing as an example of the self-forgetful, and world-forgetful, character of habit. It's one of the best descriptions of the experience of writing that I have come across. A few preliminaries to make sense of the analysis: Griffiths…
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