Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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I rene Dingel's contribution to Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550-1675 examines the role of controversy in the formation of Lutheran theology and practice. She examines several early intra-Lutheran controversies, among them the contest between the Gnesio-Lutherans led by Matthias Flacius and the “Philippists” led by Melanchthon. The former accused the latter…
I n a 1991 article in the Journal of Biblical Literature , John H. Wright asks what role 1 Chronicles 23–27 play in the Chronicler's account. The chapters look like a digression. David delivers an exhortation to Solomon (1 Chronicles 23) and makes him king (23:1), but that is followed…
D uring the early decades of the Reformation, there were efforts on all sides to reconcile Reformers and Catholics. Diarmaid MacCulloch ( Europe's House Divided ) describes the ecumenical efforts of the Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann von Wied. Von Wied was not a promising candidate to be a reform leader:…
A t the beginning of their Dialectic of Enlightenment , Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno define Enlightenment in terms of disenchantment of the world: “Enlightenment’s program was the disenchantment of the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge. Bacon, ‘the father of experimental philosophy,' brought these…
T he Reformation and the Catholic reaction to it caused a massive split within Western Christendom, and further divisions proliferated from that original split. As Diarmaid MacCulloch points out ( Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 ), that is only one part of the story: “The Protestant communities, which for a…
“T he most influential work of Italian spirituality in these years, the Beneficio di Cristo (published 1543, and apparently selling in tens of thousands before translation into other European languages), illustrates this continuing shapelessness—it was itself a somewhat shapeless work. It was written by a Cassinese Benedictine monk Don Benedetto…
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