Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Protestant-Catholic relationship has hardly been an untroubled one. And yet, the possibilities for various layers of reconciliation are better then at any time since the original schism 500 years ago. One of the symbols for the church that is used in Scripture is the church as a household (Ephesians…
Despite the layers of wiping, covering, and ransoming during the Day of Recoverings, true unity still has not been achieved. Divorce is still possible; God still might leave his people. Thus the Day of Recoverings must be repeated every year. The perpetual expression of unity between God and man in…
The events of Leviticus 16 are commonly known as “The Day of Atonement,” from the Hebrew phrase yom hakippurim, in Leviticus 23:27. However, it would be more accurate to say, “The Day of Atonements,” [i] since the word is plural. The plurality primarily relates to 16:33, which states five different…
Mary Douglas, against the common notion that primitive religious rituals were illogical and random asserts, “The analysis of ritual symbolism cannot begin until we recognize ritual as an attempt to create and maintain a particular culture … Any culture is a series of structures which comprise social forms, values, cosmology,…
Jesus holds seven stars. They are the angels of the seven churches (Revelation 1:20). For ancient readers and hearers, "seven stars" would evoke a number of associations - the seven planets, the seven stars of Ursa Major, and the seven stars that make up the Pleiades. The last makes a…
When he first arrives in Harran, at Paddan-Aram, the home of Laban his uncle, Jacob sees a well. Wells are mentioned frequently in Genesis. Twice Hagar finds a well in the wilderness (Genesis 16:14; 21:19). Philistines seize Abraham’s well (21:22-34), and Abraham’s chief servant finds a wife for Isaac at…
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America often claims to be the cornerstone of global order. Much of its foreign policy, argues George Friedman ( The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century , 46), is about creating disorder in order to prevent another power from imposing order and gaining power. If you think…
Reader Cas Saternos offers these thoughts in response to a post several weeks ago on knowing. The rest of this post is from him: Your comments on the three stage or “moments” of knowing fit well with the use of the term “know” in the musical realm. Consider the phrase…
Jenson summarizes Jonathan Edwards’ critique of substance in Systematic Theology: Volume 2: The Works of God (Systematic Theology (Oxford Hardcover)) (39-41). Edwards targets the mechanization of the world in Newton and Locke, arguing that “Christianity could not long coexist with a mechanistic worldview.” That was no problem, since for Edwards…
Jenson ( The knowledge of things hoped for : the sense of theological discourse , 174) summarizes his critique of Bultmann thusly: “For Bultmann, when Jesus’ history is to be told as about God, as eschatological occurrence, it is reduced to the ‘that.’ In the proclamation we meet the Christ…
Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Jewish Culture and Contexts) . Philadelphia:University ofPennsylvania Press, 2007. Modern biblical criticism is the product of Jewish-Christian cooperation. On the one hand, it is a creation of Anti-Calvinist Pietists…
William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hardback, 285 pp, $49.95. In the beginning was religion, and only religion. Now religion was irrational, absolutist, and divisive, and so chaos was on the face of the…
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