Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Who were the company of singers who sang in the Temple built by Solomon? I think many people might answer “the Levitical singers.” That is not correct, because the Levites were not allowed inside the Temple; only the priests were. The Levitical choir and orchestra performed for Yahweh outside the…
Dear Congregation, Social media is awash with rants for and against the ruling from the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) yesterday regarding homosexual marriage ( Obergefell v. Hodges ). My contribution on Facebook was simply to quote relevant sections of the dissents written by the four judges in the minority. Even though…
After the Civil War, the hobbled nation and fractured races looked about for leadership; animosity was high and envy was crouching at the door. Booker Taliaferro Washington, up from slavery, surveyed the rising tension and injustice, foreseeing civil unrest and chafing inequalities, eschewed, remarkably, a legislative remedy and advised a…
The ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges “came down” on Friday morning, June 26, 2015, like a bolt from Zeus. Many who refuse to bow to the dictates of our Olympians will write trenchant legal, theological, and cultural/political analyses of the court’s ruling. What I’m comfortable contributing to the historical record,…
Orthodox Christianity has lost all cultural potency in the U.S. No one defending traditional marriage before the court dared raise the fundamental question: Who creates marriage, God or the state? Theology has no public standing, no persuasive force in the culture at large. Obergefell is another nail in the coffin…
One will rarely come upon a classical allusion in a Robert Frost poem. His poetic scheme was to follow the speaking patterns of common folk, to use their words and images to achieve his point. Despite this simplicity, there is a depth and richness to his poetry that can be…
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S arah Eekhoff Zylstra reports in Christianity Today on efforts to change laws concerning church construction in Egypt: “Current laws, which have been in place since 1856, require Christians to get the consent of the local Muslim community—and the country’s president—before building a church.” At times, “Christians were required to…
D arian Leader notes in What Is Madness? that the various theories of madness that have been developed over the past fifty years are “more or less unknown outside a very narrow professional field” (2). That research has been undertaken within a psychoanalytic framework, and is barely known even to…
Haiku is the most mockable poetic form. It seems easy, and a lot of bad haiku gets written. The best haiku exemplifies the nature of poetry, which I have described as a “ concentrated excess of language .” Reading a well-constructive haiku is like viewing a scene in a flash…
A s Rhodri Lewis points out , the evidence that Hamlet is young is overwhelming: “Claudius counsels Hamlet that his enduring display of grief for his father is ‘unmanly,' a term whose persuasive force depends on Hamlet aspiring to, rather than already having attained, the condition of manliness; Laertes thinks…
E ach day the sun rises and sets. Each year, the sun does the same, ascending during the spring to its zenith in the summer solstice and then descending again to its nadir in the winter solstice. As Jean Hani points out ( Symbolism of the Christian Temple , 73-4),…
T he Reformers read Revelation as a prophetic outline of history, and so identified the beast and harlot with the Catholic church of their time. In response, Catholics developed “preterist” and “futurist” readings of the book, which viewed the Apocalypse as a prophecy of fulfilled events of the distant past,…
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