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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Barth quotes one CJ Nitzsch on the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity: ?So long as theism only distinguishes God and the world and never God from God, it is always caught in a relapse or transition to the pantheistic or some other denial of absolute being. There can…
Walsh has this intriguing comment about the man stone to death for blasphemy in Lev 24: “The man is oddly anonymous, although his Israelite mother, his maternal grandfather, and his tribal forefather are all named. This is a more subtle invocation of the law of the talion: the man who…
Jerome Walsh (in Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative ) points out the chiastic structure of Gen 12:6b: Pharaoh gives Abram “flocks-and-herds/jackasses/men servants//women servants/jenny asses/camels.” This arrangement highlights the gift of slaves to Abram, anticipating the “gift” of Hebrew slaves to Moses in the exodus. Abram leaves Egypt not…
Ever since first reading Milbank’s Theology and Society Theory , I’ve been intrigued by the work of JG Hamann. A recent brief article by John R. Betz in Modern Theology (April 2004) raised my interest again. Betz reviews Oswald Bayer’s recent Vernunft ist Sprache: Hamanns Metakritik Kants , and provides…
Iain Provan, Philips Long, and Tremper Longman’s A Biblical History of Israel begins with several excellent chapters on OT historiography, and on historiographical issues in general. Some highlights of the discussion (highlights to me at least): 1) The authors challenge the distinction between primary and secondary sources because it is…
For all those readers out there who read Polish: Several of my articles have been translated and published in the Reformacja w Polsce ( Reformation in Poland ), a quaterly published by Evangelical Reformed Church in Wroclaw, Poland. Bogumil Jarmulak sent me the following links: “Why Sacraments” ( Dlaczego sakramenty…
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