Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
10. Do not slander [tattle on] a slave to his master, Lest he curse [denounce] you and you be found guilty. The Sojourner of Proverbs 30 is a humble man. He makes this clear in verses 2-4, where he says that he is stupider than anyone else on earth, but…
In retrospect and at first glance, many of the issues that have plagued and divided the Church seem incredibly trivial. The Quartodecimians were branded as heretics for celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan. One of the issues that divided the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054 was the kind of bread…
The gifts of the wise men have been commonly interpreted as royal gifts to the infant King of the Jews. Each of the three gifts is, indeed, connected with kings and kingship in Scripture. The Lord’s anointed is pictured wearing a crown of gold in Psalm 21:3, and the gold…
The Church is not in good shape. Nearly every week we hear about another prominent Christian leader who has fallen into scandalous sin. Many shepherds feed their flocks a diet of baby food, if not outright poison. Few Churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper regularly, and few Christians appreciate its importance.…
Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?"…
During the Middle Ages, Joseph, the husband of Mary, was the butt of many jokes. Medieval theater and art often depicted him as something of a buffoon, decidedly marginal to the gospel story. In part, this was the unfortunate obverse of the exaltation of Mary; any man would suffer by…
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“Do not leg the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.” It sounds spooky and bizarre: Are we in danger of being haunted by some anger-demon? Once we remember that “diabolos” means “slanderer,” it’s no longer the stuff of horror movies. It’s a…
Bruce Holsinger’s book, The Premodern Condition , is reviewed in the April 14 issue of TLS. Holsinger is tracing the rise of theory in France of the 1960s, and shows that the avant garde was “surprisingly heavily indebted to medievalism.” He describes their relationship to the medieval past as “sacramental”…
2 Kings 17:23: So Israel was carried away into exile. In this morning’s sermon, I suggested that we should read the conclusion of the history of the North as part of the gospel story. This passage highlights the fact that Israel’s failure was a failure to believe God, a failure…
Easter is about faith, because by His resurrection Jesus has been installed as the mediator, the firmament boundary between God and man. In the Old Testament, priests served as mediators, who stood in the middle between God and man. Organized in a ring around Yahweh’s tent, the priests served as…
Baptism, Luther says in his Small Catechism, is not water only, but water “comprehended in God’s word and connected with God’s command.” The following question asks what word constitutes the water as baptism, and cites Matthew 28: “Go ye therefore . . . ” That is, the word that constitutes…
Baillie quotes the opening lines of Rousseau’s Confessions , and notes that it, like Descartes’s cogito, is an “effort to avert attention from what Girard calls mimetic desire, the elimination of which is tantamount to the rejection of Christian anthropology. Rousseau begins his Confessions not with a prayer, but with…
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