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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1 Peter 3:7: You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel. As Toby has pointed out in the sermon, Paul describes the wife as a “vessel” that a husbands is to treat with honor. This is, as Toby pointed out, a priestly…
Lent is a season for taking stock and cleaning house, a time of self-examination, confession and repentance. But we need to remind ourselves constantly what true repentance looks like. “Giving up” something for Lent is fine, but you keep Lent best by making war on all the evil habits and…
Summarizing the lessons drawn from Steve Coll’s recent The Bin Ladens , Fred Halliday writes (in NYRB ), “although the attacks on Manhattan and Washington in September 2001 were direct hits on American soil, Osama bin Laden’s aims do not encompass the defeat of the United States, or the conquest…
Ian McEwan’s NYRB remembrance of Updike is the best obit I’ve read. He gets the dynamic of Updike right, locating the “seriousness and dark humor” in a “tension between intellectual reach and metaphysical dread.” He understands the centrality of Updike’s Lutheranism and of the cinema. He gets the sex right:…
I have had conversations with several people recently about the state of poetry, and I’ve seen other signs that there is a growing interest among Christians in reviving poetry. That’s great; the Bible’s written in poetry, and our un-poetic sensibilities have been one reason for our un-imaginative and inaccurate reading…
Sean Mahaffey writes: “The story of Paul seems to end ‘wrong.’ Here is a classically trained bold and faithful preacher with a leadership resume chained in the emperor’s house. Paul seems another Joseph/Daniel/Mordecai/Nehemiah. He should have been raised to a position of prominence - perhaps to the right hand of…
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