Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In our first essay we looked at Kline’s flawed exegesis of Genesis 2:5 as it relates to Day 3 of creation. Now we turn to Kline’s new argument against a chronological reading of Genesis 1, as found, again, in "Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony," Perspectives on Science and…
One of the advantages of paying very close attention to the details in the Bible, especially chronological and genealogical details, is that they can shed light on situations that don’t seem to make much sense apart from them. One such situation is that of Bathsheba. It appears that Bathsheba willingly…
Once upon a time, Jeff Meyers and Tony Rollins–old friends who had not seen each other for a few years–met in the parking lot of a neighborhood church. They were dropping off their pre-school children at the church for Mother’s Day Out. They were such conscientious and helpful fathers. As…
Years ago, when I was at the briefly-existing Geneva Divinity School, I taught a course in the Apocrypha. One thing that struck me at that time is that two of the stories are almost certainly religious allegories (as well as moral tales): Judith and Susanna. Since "Susanna" means "Lily," this…
Peter’s essay inspires me to write up some similar thoughts about the flower of the field. Rightly does Peter associate the almond with Yahweh’s garden, because the Garden of Eden is symbolically positioned as parallel to the Holy Place of the Tabernacle and Temple. To wit: Since Aaron’s rod blossomed…
We have had occasion to discuss the views of Meredith G. Kline previously in these newsletters, and now it is time to do so again. Kline teaches at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and also at the Westminster Theological Seminaries (Philadelphia and San Diego). He is the author of some interesting insights…
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Z ygmunt Bauman thinks we are awash in nostalgia. We have created a Retrotopia . Nostalgia, he argues, “is but one member of the rather extended family of affectionate relationship with an ‘elsewhere.'” Thus retrotopia shares characteristics with utopian inspirations and progressive projects, the main difference being that the Angel…
“T here's a new ‘sacred' in town,” write Juan and Stacey Floyd-Thomas in The Altars Where We Worship . It's not the old sacred of church, word, sacrament. They write, “Statistics reveal a startling gap between confession and practice in American religion. Slightly more than 70 percent of Americans in…
P atrick Deneen ( Democratic Faith , xiv) tells the story of the desacralization of the Cathedral of Saint Genevieve in 1791. The national assembly decided to “rededicate the basilica as a resting place for France’s revolutionary heroes. Above its doors were carved the words, ‘Aux grands hommes la Patrie…
I n his Aesthetics of Architecture , Roger Scruton summarizes RG Collingwood's distinction between art and craft. It has a surface plausibility: “Initially it seems quite reasonable to distinguish the attitude of the craftsman—who aims at a certain result and does what he can to achieve it—from that of the…
I n his book, Disenchanted Night , Wolfgang Schivelbusch considers the difference between lighting by torches and lighting with candles. With the torch, “the site of combustion and the fuel are one and the same thing, while in the candle they are clearly separated. From now on the wick acts…
H esiod's “Hymn to Hekate” seems to interrupt the Theogony to no good purpose. Hekate isn't a major goddess, and the hymn doesn't seem to be integrated into the rest of the poem. In her forthcoming bilingual edition of Hesiod's poems, Kimberly Johnson argues that “Hekate is integral to the…
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