Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, all the world is a stage, but like the Tabernacle, that stage moves around a lot. David’s defeat of Goliath can only be fully understood as liturgy fulfilled in history. Liturgy, as a sacrifice of praise, is the step-by-step process of resolving a conflict. It relinquishes all…
Aristotle isn’t fundamentally wrong about friendship, nor is the long tradition that follows him. But you might not gather that by reading some of the more pointed critics of the classical conception of friendship. I think, however, that the classical view is not only viable but taken up and fulfilled…
#13 in Theopolis Papers, Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World It is time for me to “cast off” integration, the way a knitter removes a completed scarf from the needles. I want to bring my quest concerning integration to a decent closure, though my happy quest for reality continues. With…
Below are some notes on a particular sub-theme of Daniel 3, namely the downfall of Babylon’s liturgy. First up, a few words on our text’s literary construction. One of the most conspicuous features of Dan. 3 is its author’s love of lists . Personnel are listed (vs. 2, 3, 27),…
Few things in Scripture, few things in the Christian life, are more familiar than the Lord’s Prayer. Sunday after Sunday, we pray these words together with our brothers and sisters. At home, alone or with our families, we pray this prayer daily, as Jesus taught us (Luke 11:2: “When you…
At the 2019 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, the denominational delegates considered a number of official overtures (requests for action from the regional parts of the denomination) relating to issues of gender and sexuality. The PCA is conservative. As evidence of this, the assembly passed a resolution…
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Isaiah 66 includes a terrifying warning to Israel: Yahweh is coming in fire, nose burning in anger, riding on the whirlwind that drives away the wicked like chaff. He’s coming with sword and fire to bring judgment (vv. 15-16). Sword and fire. That’s familiar. There’s the fiery sword of the…
One of the intriguing ideas in Deep Church Rising , written by Andrew G. Walker and Robin Parry, is that the church is currently suffering its “third schism.” The first two are familiar: The schism of East and West during the eleventh century, and the Protestant-Catholic division of the sixteenth.…
The Hebrew word chul means whirl, twist, or writhe, and in some contexts “dance.” In certain settings, it takes on the sense of “travail in labor,” describing a woman who writhes to bring forth a child (cf. Isaiah 26:27-28; 45:10; 51:2; 54:1). The world itself writhes in Yahweh’s presence (1…
“I will extend peace to her like a river,” Yahweh promises Jerusalem (66:12a). How is peace like a river? The parallel line that follows helps explain: “And the glory of nations like an overflowing stream.” Once, the glory of Jerusalem flowed out of Jerusalem to Babylon - the glory of…
Lawrence Buell’s The Dream of the Great American Novel addresses a long-standing question in American letters: Is there such a thing as a GAN, and if so, what is it? In her TLS review , Sarah Graham writes, “Introduced in print by John W. De Forest in January 1868, the…
Martin Bernal ( Black Athena , 1.128) points out the novelty of Christian association with the sign of the fish, which had no purchase in the Old Testament: “Key disciples were fishermen, and fishing images abound. There is the miracle of the two fishes and the five loaves of bread.…
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