Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Who were the company of singers who sang in the Temple built by Solomon? I think many people might answer “the Levitical singers.” That is not correct, because the Levites were not allowed inside the Temple; only the priests were. The Levitical choir and orchestra performed for Yahweh outside the…
Dear Congregation, Social media is awash with rants for and against the ruling from the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) yesterday regarding homosexual marriage ( Obergefell v. Hodges ). My contribution on Facebook was simply to quote relevant sections of the dissents written by the four judges in the minority. Even though…
After the Civil War, the hobbled nation and fractured races looked about for leadership; animosity was high and envy was crouching at the door. Booker Taliaferro Washington, up from slavery, surveyed the rising tension and injustice, foreseeing civil unrest and chafing inequalities, eschewed, remarkably, a legislative remedy and advised a…
The ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges “came down” on Friday morning, June 26, 2015, like a bolt from Zeus. Many who refuse to bow to the dictates of our Olympians will write trenchant legal, theological, and cultural/political analyses of the court’s ruling. What I’m comfortable contributing to the historical record,…
Orthodox Christianity has lost all cultural potency in the U.S. No one defending traditional marriage before the court dared raise the fundamental question: Who creates marriage, God or the state? Theology has no public standing, no persuasive force in the culture at large. Obergefell is another nail in the coffin…
One will rarely come upon a classical allusion in a Robert Frost poem. His poetic scheme was to follow the speaking patterns of common folk, to use their words and images to achieve his point. Despite this simplicity, there is a depth and richness to his poetry that can be…
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C. S. Lewis has some wise words about sex in the Eros chapter of The Four Loves : “our advertisements, at their sexiest, paint the whole business in terms of the rapt, the intense, the swoony-devout; seldom a hint of gaiety. And the psychologists have so bedevilled us with the…
Eve Sweetser of UC Berkeley has a review of a book by Susan Goldin-Meadow in the June 10 issue of Nature . The book is entitled Hearing Gesture and it seeks to answer several questions about the cognitive role of gesture: “is gesture really a window on thought? If it…
Baruch Halpern argues in his 2001 biography of David, David’s Secret Demons , that David was the first individualist, the first modern man. Part of his evidence is that David so often violates conventions in surprising ways. He offers David’s battle with Goliath as an example. Contrary to the popular…
The Gifts of God, Hebrews 9:1-10 INTRODUCTION It is often said that we come to worship to give and not to receive. That is a dangerous half-truth. Praise, thanks, adoration are all part of worship, of course, and God delights in our praise. But in worship as in all of…
Iain Provan suggests the following interpretation of Ecclesiastes 8:12-13: “The clear implication of his thinking must be that there is some ‘time’ beyond the ‘times’ of life in which wrongs can be righted and imbalanced corrected; yet as we have seen Qohelet is agnostic about life after death (3:18-21) .…
Evensong A full moon rises from behind The topmost branches of a tree, Then slants across the sky. A pheasant?s shriek joins distant shouts, The barks and laughter from the park, On the cooling air. Then comes the silence of the night: Not the silence of the dead, But too…
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