Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I thought it might be good to put this up here, since it is 14 years old, and itself reflects earlier discussion. From this you can see that we at BH have been considering this notion for quite some time. Clearly, the last word has not been said. — James…
Hopefully, my commentary on James will be out later this year. But here are a few chiasms for your consideration. I think the James 5 chiasm orginally came from Doug Jordan. The entire book of James is focused on how the pastors and leaders (“brothers”) of the church use their…
In my first post I noted that the parables of Jesus were not simply illustrative stories. They are really nothing like the kind of simple, homely illustrations that preachers often use to explain difficult concepts to their congregations. Just to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with illustrating one’s sermonic statements.…
Ephesians is often treated as a pure type example of the Pauline method that “the indicative preceds the imperative.” But what Paul does first is pray . Simply reading verse 3 and following involves readers in a prayer of thanksgiving to God–and much more so for those listening to the…
Yesterday, I took part with my oldest son in a church-sponsored city outreach project (not because I’m especially prone to such behavior but because my son has a Boy Scout requirement that this would help him meet). Before we were sent out on our various jobs, the leader gave a…
There is a scene in Prince Caspian , the second in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia that helps explain why it is we have four Gospels, that is four accounts of the Good News of Jesus Christ—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is the account of Lucy’s longed-for experience…
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Rowan Williams concludes a brief summary of the patristic debates about the double/single will of Jesus by saying “we are encouraged to see Jesus as fully aware of the general possibilities of human nature, including the possibilities of betrayal, cowardice, and self-gratification, aware of those as part of his composition…
For many Christians, sacraments are locked in a winner-take-all battle with faith. Are we reconciled to God by faith or by baptism? Do we feed on Christ by believing or by eating bread and drinking wine? When we place too much emphasis on sacraments, many believe, we run the risk…
Peter King begins his Private Dwelling by posing what he describes as simple, silly, obvious questions about housing: What is its use? Who needs it? What is housing for? Early on, he points to the “iconography” implied by our language about housing: “There is an iconography attached to housing that…
Charles Taylor's The Language Animal is a defense of HHH against HLC. That is, he thinks the linguistic perspective developed by Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt is superior to the rationalist and empiricist tradition of Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac. HLC “tried to understand language within the confines of the modern representational…
Monks fled. They did not flee from community or contact with others. They fled in order to become more deeply engaged with others in a more radical form of community. Rowan Williams writes ( Silence and Honey Cakes ), “What is learned in the desert is clearly not some individual…
Walter Benjamin had no totalizing philosophical system. He was an essayist, admits Ranier Rochlitz ( The Disenchantment of Art ). Rochlitz doesn't use the term to demean, however. Benjamin “is not an essayist in the manner of Montaigne; the scientific imperative is not lacking in his essays. He conducts concrete…
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