Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a recent article in Biblical Horizons , I argued that the imagery of James 1:21 alludes to baptism, and particularly to baptism as an ordination and incorporation into the holy priesthood. This understanding of baptism as ordination to priesthood is not, I have since discovered, original, but in fact…
He will be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace will be between the two of them (Zechariah 6:13b). A prime difficulty in the interpretation of this verse is the antecedent of the pronoun "them." A number of alternatives have been offered. Some suggest that the "two"…
Like certain kinds of music, the unchanging rhythm of Aquinas's Summa gets into your bones. Read a few sections and it begins to run through your head. You start drumming your fingers, humming, swaying gently to the rhythm of Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, “It seems-On the contrary-I answer.” The only…
The Book of Revelation is a gold mine of liturgical information. The various hymns and exclamations in Revelation have always been used in Christian worship. As I have been studying Revelation this year, it occurred to me that make a complete hymn out of the various hymns in the book.…
In the book of Revelation we find a triad of Strong Angels, and another triad of Other Angels. The purpose of this essay is to explore the Biblical background of these two sets, and thus fill out their meaning. The first triad of angels we encounter in the Bible comes…
In Revelation, the term aggelos means messenger, of course, but with a special emphasis on messenger as covenant administrator. This is immediately obvious from the fact that the angels are constantly acting to enforce the covenant one way or another: sealing people, bringing judgment, calling for repentance, etc. They are…
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In her recently-published Rituals of Spontaneity (Baylor), Lori Branch investigates the shift from ritual to emotional expression in liturgy, poetry, romance, consumer behavior from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. She asks, “How and why did the popular conception of poetry shift from ritual recitation and communal performance to the…
Helmut Thielicke says that Lessing cannot find the absolute of reason in the relativity of history because “history is an accumulation of the accidental and irrational.” Behind the epochal hermeneutical ditch between the truths of reasons and contingencies of history is a loss of any sense of providential history. Or,…
Helmut Thielicke says that Lessing cannot find the absolute of reason in the relativity of history because “history is an accumulation of the accidental and irrational.” Behind the epochal hermeneutical ditch between the truths of reasons and contingencies of history is a loss of any sense of providential history. Or,…
Lundin sees a link between (some) Protestant hermeneutics, Schleiermacher, and the quest of the historical Jesus. The common factor is a search for a pure origin: “In the nineteenth century the quest for scriptural purity and origins assumed a number of guises. In some quarters, it became the drive to…
Thanks to Tim Enloe for getting me a copy of David Rankin’s 2004 article, “Class Distinction as a Way of Doing Church: The Early Fathers and the Christian Plebs” ( Vigiliae Christianae 58). He examines the way the terminology and orders of Roman society were imported into the church. As…
Problems of communication are often explained in terms of the inherent limitations of language. But this, of course, assumes that the mind’s thoughts are whole, complete, and comprehensive until they have the misfortune to issue into the cold nasty world in speech and writing. But this, of course, is just…
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