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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Charon Ross offers a brilliant analysis of rock concerts as ecstatic experiences ( Gifts Glittering and Poisoned , 132-4). The concert is a carefully orchestrated symbolic constellation “designed to enable the spectator to have experiences of ecstasy so wonderful and powerful that they are difficult to capture with words. Euphoria…
What Do Pictures Want? seems an odd title for a book on picture theory. WJT Mitchell intends his title to highlight the “double consciousness” that we have toward images. “why is it that people have such strange attitudes toward images, objects, and media? Why do they behave as if pictures…
Detached from the Eucharistic liturgy, preaching is at sea. Preachers announce the gospel and call our people to faith. We also want to give them something to do. There are dangers on both sides: We may so much emphasize the grace of God that we provide sophisticated excuses for passivity…
A year ago, Sarah Ditum wrote a piece for The New Statesman that compared abortion with organ donation, pointing out that the demands on a pregnant woman's body are far greater than the demands laid on organ donors: “giving away a bagful of gore or a chunk of liver that…
According to Fintan O'Toole's NYRB review , James Shapiro's The Year of Lear helps to unravel some of the mysteries of that most haunting of Shakespeare's tragedies. O'Toole nicely captures why the play is so haunting: “King Lear is not apocalyptic, it is far worse. Instead of deserved damnation and…
Geert Buelens's Everything To Nothing offers a European-wide review of the poets writing before and during World War I. It is a tour de force , recalling forgotten poets to vivid life and setting better-known poets in a new European context. The poets, he argues, were not only observers but…
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