Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…
Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…
At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…
How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…
1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…
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Paul Fiddes ( The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) , 7) repeats a truism when he writes, “Poetic metaphor and narrative rejoice in ambiguity and the opening up of multiple meaning; doctrine will always seek to reduce to concepts the images and stories upon…
Rosenstock-Huessy ( The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun (The Cloister Library) , 130) note that language, like all life, deteriorates naturally “from inspiration to routine”: “Every time we speak we eiyther renew or cheapen the words we use.” Christian language is no exception: “Christian language can be abused…
Repetition is not itself bad, Rosenstock-Huessy says ( The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun (The Cloister Library) , 80-1): “Life itself rests on a certain balance between recurrent and novel processes; the former are our fixed capital investment, the latter our free range of choice, selection, change, at…
Exodus 28:32-33: Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Thus they shall eat those things by which atonement was made at their ordination and consecration; but a layman shall not…
You are priests, ordained to priesthood by baptism, which united you to Jesus Christ, the High Priest of a priestly community. When Aaron and his sons were ordained, Moses smeared blood on their right ear lobes, their right thumbs, their right bog toes. Their ears, hands, and feet became holy…
In his study of The Passions of Christ in High-Medieval Thought: An Essay on Christological Development (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) , Kevin Madigan concludes that on the issues of the human passions of Christ the scholastic theologians did not unpack what was implicit in patristic Christological. Rather, “high-medieval christological…
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