Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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A ll theology is about God. All theology is theology proper. For Christian theology, the only God who is is the God who created this world. All theology is theology of creation. There is no God but the God of history, who chose Israel. All theology is covenant theology. There…
T he Lord's response to Solomon's prayer, and to Israel's song and sacrifice, is laid out in an interlocking series of chiasms (2 Chronicles 7:12–22). After an introductory notice that Yahweh appeared to Solomon by night (v. 12), the first, affirmative response is a pledge of God's presence and attention:…
I n The Watershed of Modern Politics , the last of a trilogy on the emergence of modern political thought from the Latin Middle Ages, Francis Oakley observes that “arguments based on secular political analogies, or arguments simply taking for granted something of a constitutional overlap between political and ecclesiastical…
T he Chronicler can't talk about praise without breaking out in praise. He can't describe Israel's worship without worshiping. This tic makes for some convolution. After the ark ascends to Zion and enters the tent of David, the Levitical singers praise Yahweh. The Chronicler writes, “And with [the priests] were…
P salm 72 is one of the most majestic, calmly triumphant Psalms in the Psalter. Attributed to Solomon, or written for Solomon, it is redolent of the glories of his reign. This king has received judgments from the God of Israel, and that enables him to pass judgment. Gifts from…
“P opulism seems more and more to be an inevitable drift of unqualified liberal democracy,” writes John Milbank (244). Well, duh, we might say, except that this appears in a book published in 2009 ( The Future of Love ), before Le Pen or Brexit or Trump were the stuff…
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