Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Inspired by our recent podcast on Christmas and Advent music recommendations, we offer here a list of excellent recordings that are sure to enrich your Advent and Christmas season. Praetorius: Mass for Christmas Morning Paul McCreesh with the Gabrieli Consort and Players Amazon | Spotify | Apple Music 2. Christmas…
In the year 1483 in the city of Nuremberg, the leaders of the renowned Saint Lawrence Church were seeking to redesign their altar, and above the table where the priests presided over the eucharist, they wanted new art installed above the prestigious Krell altar. What they decided on took everyone…
The consequences of disobedience start with exile from the garden of God and the Tree of Yahweh, but they do not end there. They cascade down through the structure of the dynastic order. Everything which had previously been given in the Kingdom of Elohim is either taken back or curtailed…
Parallelism: A Course Correction If you have ever studied Hebrew poetry, you have probably heard its basic poetic feature described as “parallelism.” Hebrew poetry is not metered, it does not rhyme, it does not employ many of the common poetical tropes, but its distinctive (and almost universal) feature is commonly…
In The Crown and the Courts , David C. Flatto traces the development of the idea of judicial independence in Jewish commentaries on the Scriptures – particularly Deuteronomy 17 – from the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. These periods roughly span 400 BC to 300 AD. Flatto does not…
A curious feature of the Infancy Narratives in the Gospel of Luke is the naming of John the Baptist. When the angel appears to Zechariah, he is instructed to give his promised son the name John (Luke 1:13). On the day of John’s circumcision, Luke tells us that “they [presumably…
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R owan Williams ( Sign and Sacrifice ) summarizes the Anselmian understanding of the atonement using the categories of sacrifice, obedience, and gift, all set within a Trinitarian frame. It's quite lovely. Citing Hebrews citing Psalm 40, Williams argues that the Old Testament sacrificial system existed to symbolize the true…
D escribing the assignments of Levite gatekeepers, the Chronicler records that there were four at the “highway” at the western end of the temple, and two “at the Parbar,” which was also on the west (1 Chronicles 26:18). Scholars have proposed a variety of foreign etymologies for the term. From…
D enis McNamara's How To Read Churches is an extraordinary book. Subtitled “a crash course in ecclesiastical architecture,” it covers building types, floor plans, sections of churches (nave, apse, choir), materials, windows, altars, ornaments in 256, 6 x 6-inch pages, each of which is stuffed with pictures and diagrams and…
J ohn Milbank cites what he calls “Socrates's subversive realization” that “education can never be democratic” ( Being Reconciled , 182). This is in part because “the sheer singular uniqueness and contingency of wisdom is unable to subordinate itself to any majority,” partly because “if one is to learn, one…
T hrough a series of thought experiments, Richard Foley ( Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others ) develops a concept of rationality as “a matter of making oneself invulnerable to intellectual self-criticism to the extent possible, of living up to one’s own deepest intellectual convictions and standards.” Rationality thus “requires…
F ollowing Alvin Platinga, Richard Foley summarizes the principles of Locke's epistemology in three principles ( Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others ): Evidence (the “obligation to base one's opinion on one's evidence,” the latter defined as “what one knows with certainty”); appraisal (the obligation “to appraise the probability of…
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