Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
When I became a Calvinist it wasn't long before I learned that John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ was regarded as the masterful treatise on what is known as "Limited Atonement"--the "L" in the TULIP mnemonic device for "the five points of Calvinism." This wasn't…
One of the advantages of paying very close attention to the details in the Bible, especially chronological and genealogical details, is that they can shed light on situations that don’t seem to make much sense apart from them. One such situation is that of Bathsheba. It appears that Bathsheba willingly…
The Feast of Ingathering in the seventh month of the Sinaitic calendar is also called the Feast of Sukkoth, of Booths, also called Feast of Tabernacles. I have usually called it by that last phrase, and it is the most common today; but there is a problem: A tabernacle is…
When Matthew’s Gospel was first read aloud to the fledgling Christian congregations, the experience must have been like seeing the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” appear afresh on cinema screens in 1999. Yet, unlike The Phantom Menace, the New Testament did not disappoint. Why?…
Fragmentation and integration are phenomena which artist Makoto Fujimura feels bodily, and about which he is concerned profoundly. What do these mean for him? How may we draw his insights into this ongoing consideration—itself integrative—of integration in a fragmented world? Thus far I have been acquainting you with matters already…
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J ohn Bale, bishop of Ossory from 1495 to 1563, was a polemicist and historian, author of the first known verse drama in English, and commentator on the Apocalypse. The latter is titled An Image of Both Churches , an examination of the true and false churches in the book…
H ippolytus doesn’t convince with his interpretation of prophecy in On Christ and AntiChrist , but along the way he offers some lovely meditations on the cross and the church. The cross, He says, is the weaver’s loom on which Jesus makes His bridegroom robes: “whereas the Word of God…
I n a 2005 interview with the Paris Review , Australian poet Les Murray describes his family’s religious background, and the reasons for his conversion to Catholicism: The Murrays were old-style Free Kirk Presbyterians. They ranged from devout to indifferent, but most had at least a touch of that Calvinist…
T. A. Noble ( Holy Trinity, Holy People , 7) says this about the role of the Bible in theology in a discussion of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (which, he rightly says, isn’t just Wesleyan): It is not the task of theology merely to expound and elaborate and refine the church’s…
I t’s been a metaphysical dogma for philosophers from Scholastics to Cartesians that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. John Milbank begs to differ. Writing in defense of the historicity of the Gospels’ account of the crucifixion ( Being Reconciled , 84), Milbank points out that “well-attested and…
In a brilliant 2013 article in Communio , D.C. Schindler examines the “totalitarian logic of self-limitation” within liberal order. He argues that any actual common good must precede a particular person's share in the good; the whole precedes sharing by the parts. A ruse appears at the heart of liberal…
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