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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John Cuddihy ( No Offense , 31-43) gives an illuminating and damning analysis of Reinhold Niebuhr's transformation from the son of a Missouri Lutheran pastor to the famous urbane public theologian. For Cuddihy, the interest of the account is not merely in Niebuhr's own transformation but in the way his…
Stephen Warner argues that in analyzing American religion and culture, we need to go beyond the contrast of assimilation v. multiculturalism, and beyond the simple opposition of the “culture war.” He suggests that the category of mestizaje , mixing, is more fruitful. In particular, he briefly explores the historical reasons…
The first gift promised to faithful members of the seven Asian churches is access to the tree of life in Paradise (Revelation 2:7). that is one of the last things mentioned in John's vision of new Jerusalem (22:1-2, 14). The first thing promised is the last delivered. That inversion continues…
Robert Wuthnow ( Rough Country ) observes that “symbolic boundaries having to do with religion do in fact include differences in patterns of social relationships. Homophily appears in social networks to some extend such that Catholics are more likely to include fellow Catholics among their networks of close friends than…
In his classic 1978 study of civil religion, No Offense , the late John Cuddihy affirms Talcott Parsons's view that civil society or civic culture isn't post-Christian but intensely Christianized. It is “a genuine, progressive stage in the further institutionalization of Christian values into the social structures and institutions (political,…
Ross Douthat comments on why so many of his fellow journalists are turning away from the outrageous organ trade of Planned Parenthood: “it’s precisely a fetus’s humanity that makes its organs valuable, and the experience of recognizing one’s own children, on the ultrasound monitor and after, as something more than…
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