Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I believe hymnals should be shorter than they are. Much shorter. 100 hymns at most, let’s say. I imagine that this will be a hard one to swallow for most of my readers, so I will attempt to bolster my argument as best I can. I can’t think of any…
Joshua is never called a king in the Bible. Yet while lacking the title, Joshua possesses the trappings of biblical kingship to a degree that it seems warranted to consider him a royal figure. There are lots of reasons for thinking this. In a 1981 Journal of Biblical Literature article,…
God speaks. He is not silent. He has designed humanity for reception of such communication and also to speak on His behalf. This speaking is not simply happenstance. It is not just a curious quirk about humanity. It is intrinsic to who we are that we speak and shape the…
One evening, years ago, home from college for Christmas break, I dreamt that I was playing the piano, passionately and well, in the church sanctuary beneath the parsonage in the renovated mansion in rural New Hampshire where my father was the minister. It was something of a lucid dream because…
I’m a big worrier. Always have been. Some of my earliest memories are of being anxious to the point of getting sick, sometimes for trivial reasons. My mind moves a million miles a minute, wondering what will happen in 5 minutes, or tomorrow, or next week, or in ten years.…
“The sun had gone up on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. And the LORD rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD from heaven, and he devastated those cities and the whole valley and all those dwelling in the cities and the growth of…
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And in case there is any doubt that Bloom’s aesthetics is tragic: He claims that a poet is always one who is “rebelling more strongly against the consciousness of death’s necessity than all other men and women do.” (Call this the “heroic poet,” operating by the code of heroic honor…
And in case there is any doubt that Bloom’s aesthetics is tragic: He claims that a poet is always one who is “rebelling more strongly against the consciousness of death’s necessity than all other men and women do.” (Call this the “heroic poet,” operating by the code of heroic honor…
In the introduction to Anxiety of Influence , Harold Bloom quotes Geoffrey Hartman to the effect that art seeks “to overcome priority,” specifically the priority of nature: “art fights nature on nature’s own ground, and is bound to lose.” Bloom, of course, links this up with his own project of…
Sermon outline for November 9: Where Your Treasure Is, Luke 12:1-53 INTRODUCTION Luke 11 ended with Jesus’ most clear and pointed condemnation of “this generation,” which would be charged with all the blood of prophets from Abel to Zechariah (11:51-52). Throughout the following two chapters, this threat is in the…
For Thomas, the “final cause” is the first cause. That is, the purpose for which a thing is done is what initiates doing the thing. I plan to retire to Tahiti; that is my final purpose. And that is the cause that initiates the various schemes of earning and saving…
Thomas W. Mann has some interesting comments on the Joseph narrative in his 1988 book The Book of Torah: The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch . First, he points out that Joseph’s “trial” of his brothers is equally a trial of his father; Jacob initially refuses to give up his…
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