Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Why there is more to Jephthah than meets than eye It was not that long ago that I realized the Jephthah-story and the Jesus-story were basically the same story. Sounds crazy, I know. But here is a one-paragraph synopsis of both: The people of God have gone their own way,…
G.K. Chesterton famously said that the Gospels don’t reveal Jesus’ mirth. It’s true we never catch Jesus laughing. But can we believe He never did? I don’t think so. Laughter is human, and Jesus was fully human. Jesus promised that those who mourned would laugh. He mourned; would He not…
Matthew 2 has all the elements of an exodus story. There’s a murderous king, who slaughters Jewish babies. There’s a infant who will be Israel’s future deliverer, saved from the murderous king so He can later return to save His people and lead them to the Promised land. There’s an…
The calendar of Israel was primarily theological, centered on commemorating the salvific acts of God, but also agricultural, celebrating the creation-restoring effects of those salvific acts. The feasts of the first month celebrated the reviving of the world in the Spring, and typified the cutting off of the Savior in…
The chiastic shape corresponds to the shape of human life. This should not surprise us, because we are made in the image of God, and God is manifest in Word and Spirit. If we are living epistles, our lives will look a bit like the literary shape of the books…
Back in January, Venkatesh Rao wrote a fascinating post on the Ribbonfarm blog, discussing different forms of models of narrative. Engaging with Ursula LeGuin’s talk ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ , Rao explores her contrast between the (male) ‘hero narrative’ and the (female) ‘carrier-bag story’, and suggests a third…
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Featherstone claims that economics has generally focused on the production rather than the consumption side of things, perhaps because of “the assumption that consumption was unproblematic because it was based upon the concept of rational individuals buying goods to maximize their satisfaction.” Only in the late 19th century was attention…
Cultural elites have, Featherstone suggests, an inherently ambivalent relationship with the market. His argument, if I understand it, goes something like this: Cultural elites want to preserve a monopolization of cultural products. Hence, for instance, peer review of scholarly work; work that hasn’t passed peer review can be dismissed as…
McDonald’s provides a helpful glimpse at the complexities surrounding postmodernity. On the one hand, the global reach of McDonald’s seems a perfect illustration of one part of the postmodern situation - the global diffusion of American culture and tastes, the plasticity and airiness of postmodern culture, the breaching of national…
McDonald’s provides a helpful glimpse at the complexities surrounding postmodernity. On the one hand, the global reach of McDonald’s seems a perfect illustration of one part of the postmodern situation - the global diffusion of American culture and tastes, the plasticity and airiness of postmodern culture, the breaching of national…
Though often conceived as a crisis within Western civilization, postmodernism, Featherstone argues, is partly impelled by globalization. Globalization, he begins, usually conveys two images - the spread of a single, increasingly uniform culture throughout the world, and the “compression” or layering and juxtaposition of various cultures within a particular location…
Culture, Mike Featherstone suggests in Undoing Culture , becomes problematic in consumer societies. How? As developed in cultural anthropology, culture is “somehow homologous to the distinctions, differences, and divisions between social groups who unconsciously use culture as relatively fixed markers in status games.” But in consumer societies, there is little…
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