Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The story of Judges 19 and the subsequent chapters are some of the most shocking and appalling accounts in all of Scripture. The callousness of the old host and the Levite, and the monstrous brutality of the men of Gibeah, leaves us feebly scrabbling for words by which to surmount…
David has become king. He has conquered the capital city of Jerusalem. He has brought the ark of Yahweh into the city and placed it in a tent. He has stationed Levites at the tent to offer sacrifices of praise. An anomaly hits him: He has a cedar-paneled palace, and…
In Part 2 of this series we traced what we have of the development of the epiclesis in the liturgy of the Church. In this third and final part we’ll look at the theological implications of this and how we may apply what we’ve learned. As we saw in Part…
In a 2014 piece published in First Things , I offered a "wish list" for Protestant churches, a checklist for a future catholic Protestantism. The wish list doesn't cover everything. It doesn't mention those things that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, already do, often exceedingly well, things like missions and evangelism and…
In the first part of this series we examined the meaning of “blessing” in Scripture and its parallels in Jewish liturgical tradition, but did not find anything that we could properly call an epiclesis (an invocation of the Holy Spirit). We did find examples of invocation of Jesus to “come”…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
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In his 2013 book, Saving Face , Stephen Pattison observes that infants very quickly begin to notice and recognize faces, and to imitate the expressions they see. “To be and to become human socially and emotionally,” he writes, “is to engage in real, nuanced, face-to-face visual relations.” When a child…
Between 1900 and 1960, scholars believed that Plato held to a “cosmological” view of the divine, the notion that gods are “personified forces responsible for bringing order to the sensible world.” Since then, scholars have adopted a “metaphysical” interpretation, arguing that Plato's god is finally a metaphysical principle. So argues…
Ryan Leif Hansen ( Silence and Praise ) describes Roman imperial religion as a social contract that bound the gods, the emperor, and the Roman people in a stable, peaceful order: “ Cultic ritual, sacrifice, and the related economic exchange were integral for sustaining the order of the cosmos ,…
Sara Japhet ( I and II Chronicles ) notes the “unusual” structure of the etiological story behind the name “Jabez” in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Typically, “an aetiology offers an explanation for a given datum (commonly, but not always, a name) by recounting the causes from which it arose and demonstrating…
In his powerful manifesto, Nation of Bastards , Douglas Farrow argues that the Kulturkampf in which we find ourselves began in the early part of the 20th century with “the promotion of sterilization, eugenics, and the contraceptive mentality.” In short, it started “as an attack on children,” more horrifically in…
In his reflections on Carl Schmitt, Paul W. Kahn ( Political Theology ) contrasts Enlightenment political rationalism to Schmitt's political voluntarism. Kant stands as the representative of the rationalist tradition: “For Kant, the question of freedom was that of how a subject could determine his own action in a causally…
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