Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The story of Judges 19 and the subsequent chapters are some of the most shocking and appalling accounts in all of Scripture. The callousness of the old host and the Levite, and the monstrous brutality of the men of Gibeah, leaves us feebly scrabbling for words by which to surmount…
David has become king. He has conquered the capital city of Jerusalem. He has brought the ark of Yahweh into the city and placed it in a tent. He has stationed Levites at the tent to offer sacrifices of praise. An anomaly hits him: He has a cedar-paneled palace, and…
In Part 2 of this series we traced what we have of the development of the epiclesis in the liturgy of the Church. In this third and final part we’ll look at the theological implications of this and how we may apply what we’ve learned. As we saw in Part…
In a 2014 piece published in First Things , I offered a "wish list" for Protestant churches, a checklist for a future catholic Protestantism. The wish list doesn't cover everything. It doesn't mention those things that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, already do, often exceedingly well, things like missions and evangelism and…
In the first part of this series we examined the meaning of “blessing” in Scripture and its parallels in Jewish liturgical tradition, but did not find anything that we could properly call an epiclesis (an invocation of the Holy Spirit). We did find examples of invocation of Jesus to “come”…
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…
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In the preface to Receptive Ecumenism , Paul Murray describes the three “voices” of the collection of essays in these terms: “(1) the dreaming of dreams; (2) the testing of such dreams for their viability; and (3) the discerning together of what might either hinder or promote their embodied ecclesial…
In a series of studies, Michael Tomasello and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology have attempted to isolate what makes human cognition different from that of higher primates. Through a series of studies, they concluded that the key difference is what they call “shared intentionality,” the “we”…
After the two witnesses, the seventh angel blows the seventh trumpet, and loud voices of praise break out in heaven (Revelation 11:15). We’re back in heaven, and the twenty-four elders prostrate themselves before the Lord, the pantokrator , and praise Him because the kingdom of this world ( tou kosmou…
Solomon’s throne had six steps (1 Kings 10), with two lions flanking each step. That means 12 lions. Twelve lions are twelve tribes. But not all the tribes are leonine. Look back at Genesis 49, and you’ll find a donkey tribe (Issachar), a serpent tribe (Dan), a doe tribe (Naphtali),…
Richard Ayoade’s 2013 The Double , based on a Dostoevsky novella, is a dark comedy in every sense of the word. It takes place in a shrouded world, where all trains run underground, all lights are dim or flickering, where the few outdoor scenes occur at night. The comedy comes…
Building on John Paul II’s theology of the body, Adam Cooper’s Holy Eros sketches out a “liturgical theology of the body.” He aims to show “how the liturgy bodily enacts the truth of our Christian faith, and how that truth in turn is expressed in the structure and bodily actions…
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