Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
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The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
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A t the New Yorker , Blythe Roberson is having fun imagining futuristic updates of Jane Austen's novels. Real-life efforts to update Austen aren't nearly as much fun. Paula Hollingsworth ends her The Spirituality of Jane Austen by summarizing the plots of the novels in the “Jane Austen Project,” a…
P aul writes letters. Letter-writing—or mail electronically composed and delivered—has become so commonplace that we don't immediately grasp the significance of Paul's activity. Noting the Old Testament background will shake us from our privatized assumptions about epistle-writing. There are two main words for “letter” in the Old Testament. The first,…
F ew studies of the Reformation, writes Alexandra Walsham ( The Reformation of the Landscape ), “have considered how it affected attitudes and practices associated with the world of trees, woods, springs, rocky outcrops, caves, mountain peaks, and other striking topographical features” of Britain. Studies of early modern England “have…
R itualism was a major issue in mid-nineteenth-century Anglicanism. Though inspired by the Tractarians, the ritualists went much further in elaborating the Anglican liturgy. As Peter Marsh puts it ( Victorian Church in Decline ), “For over thirty years the High Church clergy, however moderate, had been raising the standards…
J ohn Calvin isn't the first theologian who comes to mind when thinking about either liturgy or art, much less the combination of the two. W. David O. Taylor thinks that's unfortunate, and his recent Theater of God's Glory is an effort to rehabilitate Calvin as a resource for liturgical…
Boyd Hilton writes (in Age of Atonement ) about Evangelical “aetiology of business immorality” that emerges from 19th-century sermons, novels, and pamphlets: Once “fallen,” commercial man becomes a prey to materialism. His business absorbs too much of his life, and colours all his thoughts and actions, leaving no time for…
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