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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From the whirlwind, Yahweh reveals His creative power to Job, challenging Job with a repeated “where were you when. . . ?” The focus is on Yahweh’s power to create, but several times He describes His power as the power to set up dates and doors. It was Yahweh who…
Comparative literature is a standard discipline in our universities. Comparative arts is less familiar. Daniel Albright has written a treatise on comparative art in his recent Panaesthetics . Debates about the unity and diversity of art have been common in Western thought. Albright thinks that the question is unanswerable since…
My friend Rich Bledsoe in response to a recent post on sexual ethics: “it has been pointed out in relation to JD Unwin’s work, that the great, revolutionary destructions of traditional sexual morality (in Russia when marriage was virtually banned as bourgeois, and every form of deviance encouraged, and later…
Brad Gregory ( Unintended Reformation , 268-9) observes that “like radical Protestants, the magisterial reformers, including Calvin, unambiguously condemned avarice, acquisitive individualism, and any separation of economic behavior from biblical morality or the common good.” The Reformers rejected voluntary poverty, but “their attitudes about the proper human relationship to material…
Wisdom from Yves Congar, as compiled by Brother Emile of Taize in his Faithful to the Future (43): “The problems of the fifth century and the resources of Augustine are not those of the third century and Hippolytus; the problems of the thirteenth century and the resources of Thomas Aquinas…
Revelation 12 opens with a tableau of a laboring cosmic mother threatened by a devouring dragon. During the course of the chapter, the dragon’s prey is snatched from his teeth (v. 5) and the dragon is driven from the sky (vv. 7-12). But as soon as the dragon gets to…
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