Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
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Robert Kolb ( Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith ) observes that Luther resisted presenting a systematic theology of atonement. Instead, he employed various biblical images and descriptions to meet the pastoral needs of his audience: “When he addressed the guilt or shame of his hearers, Luther presented Christ’s substitutionary…
V auhini Vara reports at The Atlantic about how US frackers beat OPEC. The story starts in 2014 when “U.S. shale oil represented about 5 percent of the oil being produced worldwide. But the process was expensive, which suggested to many that shale producers could not stay in business if…
A ccording to Robert Kolb ( Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith , 125–8) Luther had a “relational” understanding of righteousness: “Whereas most medieval thinkers conceived of human ‘righteousness’ in terms of performance or activity, Luther believed that the concept rested on a deeper foundation. Righteousness is being what the…
T he final section of 1 Chronicles is neatly framed by speeches by David. Chapter 22 contains David's speech of encouragement to Solomon, concluded by a brief exhortation to “all the leaders” (22:17–19). Chapters 28–29 record several public speeches, marked by “David said” and interspersed with descriptions of temple furnishings:…
A nticlerical agitation was more consequence than cause of the English Reformation, argues David Loades in his contribution to Anticlericalism . Fashions change, including religious ones; monkish religion was not as popular by the beginning of the sixteenth century as it had been, and the energy was with the friars.…
1 Chronicles doesn't say anything about David's sin against Bath-Sheba and Uriah (cf. 2 Samuel 11–12). Bath-Sheba is never mentioned in Chronicles at all, Uriah only once, in a list of David's warriors (1 Chronicles 11:41). In the Chronicler's account, David's great sin is taking a census of Israel (1…
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