Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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Speech exists that we may "lovingly create names," writes Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 149). "Speaking is always courting" (149). Courtrooms exist for those times when speech falters. In a courtroom, speech turns from courtship to dispute and this setting changes the character of speech: "In…
Jay Zysk's Shadow and Substance is a recent contribution to a growing literature linking early modern theology with early modern drama. Zysk focuses on the ways Reformation disputes about the Eucharist play into plays, how Eucharistic semiotics shapes understandings of bodies and signs, flesh and spirit, letter and figure, words…
For Luther, faith isn't mere assent to truth, nor even confidence and trust in a distant savior. As David Fink puts it, "Faith . . . becomes the unitive force," or, in Luther's words, it "takes hold of Christ and has Him present, enclosing Him as the ring encloses a…
In his analysis of Luther's treatment of Galatians (in Reformation Readings of Paul ), David Fink gives a brief overview of pre-Reformation interpretations of the letter. Jerome said that the letter "is concerned especially with establishing the 'cessation of the old Law and the introduction of the new Law.'" Jerome…
Vico's claim that verum et factum convertuntur , "the true and the made are convertible," has been taken as a sign of the foundational atheism of modernity. Benedict XVI sees Vico's claim as a secularization, a turn from the uncreated truth that is God to constructed human things. As Robert…
"Liberals and communists," writes Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality ), "have in common that they wish to make do without church and dogma, and indeed without faith. . . . reason is enough, for we can say what we think" (141). Both retain the term "believe," but…
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