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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Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1914 (1983/2003) is an enormously rewarding book. A few highlights. In his introduction, Kern carefully examines how technological and cultural developments interacted during his time period. He eschews “technological determinism in cultural history” in favor of a nuanced spectrum of interactions. At…
Adam describes how modern efforts at time-control have undermined time-control: “For clock time to exist and thus to be measurable and controllable there has to be duration, an interval between two points in time. Without duration there is no before and after, no cause and effect, no stretch of time…
Virilio notes that (in Adam’s summary) “through the ages, the wealth and power associated with ownership of land was equally tied to the capacity to traverse it and to the speed at which this could be achieved.” A lord of vast holdings without horses to defend its distant borders won’t…
Paul Virilio observes that time “compression” (a Marxist term, referring to speeding-up of economic and other social processes) has unintended and counter-intentional consequences. Adam summarizes: “while cars, planes and trains had become progressively aster, the time spent in transit had not been compressed at an equal rate. Standstill and traffic…
Barbara Adam ( Time ) remarks, “In medieval Europe the Church as God’s representative on earth was the keeper and guardian of time. Not even the sovereign had jurisdiction over it. The sovereign had the monopoly over weights and measures; the churches were in charge of time in all its…
We can’t not talk about Jesus. He is the Word, the Living Word behind, in with and under, all our words. Whatever we try to articulate, and do articulate, with truth, is about the One in whom all things hold together. Whenever we speak falsely, we are speaking against the…
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