Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…
Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…
The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…
Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…
The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…
You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…
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Derrida captures the aporia of responsibility very nicely in this passage: “Saying that a responsible decision must be taken on the basis of knowledge seems to define the condition of possibility of responsibility (one can’t make a responsible decision without science or conscience, without knowing what one is doing, for…
According to Jan Patocka, the Roman order represents a new stage in the history of responsibility because it represents a single entity toward which all are responsible: “the Roman principality presents the problem of a ne responsibility, founded upon transcendence in the social context as well, a responsibility towards a…
Derrida is perhaps best known for his assault on self-presence, but in The Gift of Death he is eager to find out some place where the self is in absolute possession of something. Following Heidegger, for instance, he insists that death is always my death and no one else. Even…
Jeremy Narby writes, “pigeons appear to be brighter than many people suspect. One recent experiment demonstrated that pigeons can tell the difference between paintings by Van Gogh and Chagall. The birds received training in which they were rewarded for pecking at paintings by Van Gogh but discouraged from choosing Chagalls.…
Seamus Cooney, ed. The Poems of Charles Reznikoff, 1918-1975 . Boston: David R. Godine, 2005. 445 p. I had not heard of Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) when I picked up this volume, but his poetry is a find. Born to Russian Jews in New York City, Reznikoff wrote and published poetry,…
Gabriel Josipovici summarizes the story of Palti in 1-2 Samuel, the man to whom Saul gives Michal after David is driven into outlawry, and who follows Michal weeping when David demands his first wife back. What is this guy doing here, introduced only to weep and disappear from the text?…
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