Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(continued from previous issue) Between 30 and 50 What did the Levites do between age 30 and 50? Numbers 4 shows us that they carried the house of God on their shoulders. Lifting up the Lord is an image of worship in the Bible, and David’s restructuring of the Levites…
When God created the world, He created two lands: the Throne-land of Eden (entered through the sanctuary-garden, the Garden of Eden), and the Outlying Lands, such as the lands of Havilah and Cush. This essentially bi-polar world is the world of the Old Creation, and it continued to exist until…
Color is inescapable, except for those who are color blind. In our church architecture, we either employ color schemes that are helpful to worship, or we employ color schemes that are not helpful. Of course, this assertion merely begs the question: What color schemes are most helpful. God showed interest…
As I noted in an earlier article in Rite Reasons , the Church Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine all claimed that baptism inducts the baptized person into membership in the royal priesthood of the church, and Thomas Aquinas said that baptism, by imprinting an indelible “character” on the soul, confers…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
In my Preliminary Commentary on Daniel , which many of you have obtained, I argued in chapter 13 that the four monsters called up from the sea by the evangelistic work of the four winds (the saints) represented the deep hatred of God that evangelistic work brings to the fore…
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I n a scathing essay Trump and his New Nationalist supporters, Daniel Krauthammer observes that Trump defines national “greatness” as “winning”: “That was what his whole campaign was based on. His language is never about political ideals; it is about defeating opponents, being better than the other guy— win ,…
J ustice does not, David Hume argued, arise from judges with a rigorous concern for equity. It arises, like other social goods, from the mysterious harmonization of self-interested actions: “as the self-love of one person is naturally contrary to that of another, these several interested passions are obliged to adjust…
N ear the beginning of Value in Capitalist Society , Paul Cobben is explaining Marx's use of Hegelian themes and turns of argument when he summarizes Hegel's notion of Perception, a level of knowing beyond “Sense Certainty.” Cobben writes: Perception does not assume to have immediate knowledge of objective reality.…
S olomon is a builder. The verb banah (build) is used 31 times in the Chronicler's account of Solomon, mostly with reference to the construction of the temple. Chapter 8, though, uses the verb 8 times, mainly to refer to building projects other than the temple. After twenty years of…
O liver O'Donovan takes note of the power of the church's prophetic word. That's sexy. It's not so sexy to be reminded that “the church's speech is also prayer, speech addressed to God, from whom it originated, from the whole body on behalf of each charism in it” ( Desire…
R ummaging around John McGuckin's magisterial, encyclopedic, and very big history of the first millennium of Christianity, The Path of Christianity , uncovers some delightfully unexpected treasures. In chapter 7, he examines the reasons for the focus on Greek and Latin Christianity, and laments that “the non-Greek and non-Latin Christianities…
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