Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What About Catholics? (continued) Usually, such people are not seeking graven images, but rather their idolatry is of a broader character. They are seeking a home on earth. Scott Hahn’s book is called Rome Sweet Home . This is the essential sin, for there is no home on earth. The…
Reading the earliest Christian apologists is like watching a movie in which the hero has the means to demolish his opponents in his grasp but never realizes it. The apologists come across as men not altogether aware of the radical character of the gospel they defend. In response to charges…
Then [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, ne`arim came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!" When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in…
Further Numerical Items of Interest Umberto Cassuto points out some other numerical factors in Genesis 5. 1 For one thing, he observes that every number in Genesis 5 is a multiple of 5, sometimes with the addition of 7. We have, in essence, made this point already. He also points…
Prostration God has designed the human body in a marvelous way, and Biblical religion is very physical. We believe in the resurrection of the body, against all pagan ideas of the immortality of the soul. We bury our bodies, not burning them. Human beings in their totality, including our bodies,…
Since Revelation is laid out in serieses of sevens, it is worth investigating to see if there is a series of seven after the seven libation-bowls of chapter 16. I believe there is, and it is the burden of this essay to expose it. The series of sevens, or heptamerous…
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P aul begins his first letter to the Corinthians with a scathing denunciation of Corinthian factionalism. He poses several rhetorical questions: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? And he brings us baptism: Into whose name were you baptized? Paul's? Peter's? Calvin's? Luther's? Baptism is a naming ceremony, and…
I t appears that the biblical text was composed according to preconceived models and patterns shaped by certain numbers that regulate the amount of words, sentences, and verses,” writes CJ Labuschagne in his Numerical Secrets of the Bible (1). Like music, “literary texts in biblical antiquity were composed and structurally…
O ne of the faults of discourses, argues Hobbes ( Leviathan , 1.8), occurs when “men speak such words as, put together, have in them no signification at all.” The words are spoken for different reasons: They “are fallen upon, by some, through misunderstanding of the words they have received…
M onastic flight, Rowan Williams emphasizes ( Silence and Honey Cakes ), wasn't “running away from responsibility or from relationships.” Rather, it is “about denying yourself the luxury of solving your problems by running away literally or physically from them . . . and about taking responsibility for your sins”…
T he problem with sacramental theology is that it's sacramental theology. That is, the problem is the abstraction of certain events, acts, objects, things from their surroundings and subjected to detailed scrutiny. To do sacramental theology, you have to isolate bread and wine from the sequence of liturgical actions that…
T M Luhrmann ( When God Talks Back ) wants to explain believers to contemporary unbelievers. How can orthodox believers withstand the pressures of the secular world and have what they can describe as a personal relationship with God? Luhrmann emphasizes that this experience doesn't come overnight: “Skeptics sometimes imagine…
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