Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, all the world is a stage, but like the Tabernacle, that stage moves around a lot. David’s defeat of Goliath can only be fully understood as liturgy fulfilled in history. Liturgy, as a sacrifice of praise, is the step-by-step process of resolving a conflict. It relinquishes all…
Aristotle isn’t fundamentally wrong about friendship, nor is the long tradition that follows him. But you might not gather that by reading some of the more pointed critics of the classical conception of friendship. I think, however, that the classical view is not only viable but taken up and fulfilled…
#13 in Theopolis Papers, Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World It is time for me to “cast off” integration, the way a knitter removes a completed scarf from the needles. I want to bring my quest concerning integration to a decent closure, though my happy quest for reality continues. With…
Below are some notes on a particular sub-theme of Daniel 3, namely the downfall of Babylon’s liturgy. First up, a few words on our text’s literary construction. One of the most conspicuous features of Dan. 3 is its author’s love of lists . Personnel are listed (vs. 2, 3, 27),…
Few things in Scripture, few things in the Christian life, are more familiar than the Lord’s Prayer. Sunday after Sunday, we pray these words together with our brothers and sisters. At home, alone or with our families, we pray this prayer daily, as Jesus taught us (Luke 11:2: “When you…
At the 2019 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, the denominational delegates considered a number of official overtures (requests for action from the regional parts of the denomination) relating to issues of gender and sexuality. The PCA is conservative. As evidence of this, the assembly passed a resolution…
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Walton and Sandy ( The Lost World of Scripture ) define science as “an understanding of the material world derived from an empirical process and operating according to naturalistic premises” (50). Given that definition, it’s hardly surprising that they conclude that “the Bible’s illocutions do not offer scientific description or…
In their editorial introduction to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions , Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan question the common distinction between “moral” and “ritual” impurity, and the popular claim that purity rules were evolved in a “spiritualized” direction. They admit that purity means different things in different contexts,…
John sees a strong angel descending from heaven (Revelation 10:1). It’s not just an angelophany; it’s a theophany, a Christophany. That’s evident from the fact that, like the throne of God itself, his head is surrounded by the rainbow (cf. 4:3). His head is in the place where the Enthroned…
Samantha Melamed reports that young men today are no longer satisfied with a handshake: “more men are embracing, well, embracing.” Melamed writes, “The rise in hugging can be directly traced to declines in homophobia, according to Mark McCormack, a University of Durham (England) sociologist who has studied the behavior of…
“Grain and new wine” is an automatic combination throughout the Hebrew Bible (cf. e.g., Genesis 27:28, 37; Numbers 12:27; Deuteronomy 7:13; 2 Kings 18:32; 2 Chronicles 31:5; 32:28; Isaiah 62:8; Hosea 2:8). Grain ( dagan ) is almost never used without “wine,” and when it happens you know something is…
Hee Youl Lee’s A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Revelation is a complicated monograph on the role of the Spirit in Revelation. Lee argues that the book is organized by a sixfold plot (introduction, setting, complication, resolution, evaluation, moral)_ that functions at four levels (heaven, earth, abyss, lake…
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