Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Theophanic revelation is historically progressive, or eschatological, in character. First of all, in Genesis 1:2, the Spirit appeared inside the creation, sent by the Father. After the creation of man, the Spirit worked and works with humanity to bring us to maturity, from Daughter to Bride to fruitful Mother. He…
On the eighth day of the rite of "filling the hand," Aaron began his service at the altar. His first offering was a "calf" (Heb. `egel ), which served as a purification offering for himself and (apparently) his household (Leviticus 9:2, 8). This is striking for a couple of reasons.…
One of the distinctive items of the high priest’s clothing was the "golden plate" inscribed with the words "Holy to Yahweh" (Exodus 28:36-38). The word translated as "plate" is tsits , which literally means "flower." The verbal and noun forms are both used in Numbers 17:8, which describes Aaron’s rod…
The square, rectangle, and cross shapes appear all over the sanctuaries God reveals in the Bible: Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, Ezekiel’s Temple, New Jerusalem. One thing that can be said right away about these designs, and the occasional perfect circle (the lavers), is that they do not occur in nature. They…
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…
Citing Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18-20, James Jordan has written that "the name of God in use among the nations was God Most High’" (Hebrew, `el `elyon ; in Through New Eyes , p. 176). In addition to Melchizedek, one could cite the example of Balaam, who invokes the Lord both…
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Andrew Sullivan's Trumpacalyptic essay in New York doesn't persuade. The Constitutional system that Sullivan describes so well is more resilient than he thinks, and Trump more moderate, pragmatic, and changeable than he credits. But Sullivan's explanation of Trump's rise is spot on. On the one hand, there are the ongoing…
In an essay on “Two Theories of Modernity,” Charles Taylor distinguishes between cultural and a-cultural theories of modernization. The former type of theory is “one that characterizes the transformations that have issued in the modern West mainly in terms of the rise of a new culture. The contemporary Atlantic world…
First gays were oppressed by being excluded from marriage. Now they are oppressed for being confined to it. In her forthcoming Beyond Monogamy , Tulane's Mimi Schippers argues that we won't reach real sexual freedom until monogamy is cast into the dustbin. Gays and bisexuals and polysexuals of various sorts…
Richard Cross's 1999 Duns Scotus in the Great Medieval Thinkers series is an excellent, concise introduction to this most controverted of medieval theologians. It's dense, so is its subject. Cross spends a late chapter dealing with some central themes in Scotus's sacramental theology - his theory of sacramental causality, his…
The city that descends from heaven in Revelation 21:9-22:5 shines with the glory of God. She is a light to the nations: “nations shall walk by its light, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it” (v. 24). That image provides a neat model of mission.…
In the introduction to Rhetoric and Kairos , editor Phillip Sipiora notes that “ kairos first appeared in the Iliad , where it denotes a vital or lethal place in the body, one that is particularly susceptible to injury and therefore necessitates special protection; kairos thus, initially, carries a spatial…
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