Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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Another lectionary meditation at The Christian Century : http://www.theolog.org/blog/2008/06/blogging-towa-4.html
INTRODUCTION Jesus again withdraws from Israel (cf. 14:13 ), and this time, following the trail of Elijah (1 Kings 17:9), goes into the notorious region of Tyre and Sidon ( 15:21 ). There He heals a Canaanite woman’s daughter and feeds four thousand. THE TEXT “Then Jesus went out from…
Matthew 15:2: The Pharisees asked, Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread? Matthew 15 and the first part of chapter 16 return again and again to the subject of food. The Pharisees ask Jesus about washing…
1 Corinthians 6:9-11: Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? . . . Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.…
Fabian links the ocularcentrism and spatialization of Ramism with the social science tendency to regard its object of study as, well, objects: “Once the source of any knowledge worthy of that name is thought primarily to be visual perception of objects in space, why should it be scandalous to treat…
Anthropology, Fabian says, is border control: “It patrols, so to speak, the frontiers of Western culture. In fact, it has always been a Grenzwissenschaft , concerned with the boundaries: those of one race against another, those between one culture and another, and finally those between culture and nature.” Fabian thinks…
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