Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…
by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…
What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…
Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…
Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
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The following is an excerpt from Against Christianity, published in 2003. It seems more relevant today, in the age of Trumpism, than it did when I wrote it. Much popular Christian history operates in what may be called a “Eusebian” mode, treating America as the culmination of redemptive history. Eusebius…
Jean Baechler ( The Origins of Capitalism ) doesn't buy any of Marx's various accounts of the rise of capitalism. In every permutation, Marx's theory of the "original of the capitalism system presupposes the capitalist system" (25). Baechler continues: "To express myself in Platonic terms, I would say that the…
A number of things are called "most holy" ( qodesh qadashim ) in the Old Testament. Various sanctuary furnishings are "most holy" - the altar of ascensions (Exodus 29:37), the altar of incense (Exodus 30:10), the tent, the ark, the table of showbread, the lampstand, the laver (Exodus 30:29), incense…
Writing in the 1670s, Pierre Nicole turned the pessimistic anthropology of Jansenism into an apology for liberal order. "Men," he wrote, "being devoid of charity out of the derailment of sin, remain none the less filled with needs and are dependent on one another in countless ways." How can these…
Jean-Claude Michea ( Realm of Lesser Evil ) traces the unconscious roots of liberalism. Liberal egotism is the uneducated egotism of infants, who "desire to be all-powerful" (118) and express "boundless rage" (119; quoting Christopher Lasch) against anyone who fails to gratify. If parents fail the in task of "primary"…
A few discarded snippets from a review of Rosenstock-Huessy's Sociology, Volume 1 . Sociologists, Rosenstock-Huessy charges, often formulate their theories in this fashion: “an obscure Force A and a Relation B . . . affect Mr Y.” If sociologists are going to deal with reality itself, they need to take…
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