Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
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In his contribution to Pentecostalism and the Christian Churches , Waldo Cesar calls attention to the spatial connection of Latin American Pentecostal churches with the urban streets of Latin America: “There is nothing special from an architectural point of view, and in many cases large movie theater, rented or bought,…
Waldo Cesar observes ( Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches , 91-92) that Protestantism has often felt like a foreign import to Latin America. There was a discontinuity between Protestant missions and the local population, and Protestantism tended to rely on the outside world. All this impressed Latin…
David Martin ( Future of Christianity , 68-69) notes that in the heat of Pentecostal revival, blacks and whites fuse. He admits that “the fusion of black and white was partly reversed as the movement developed, when it came to the mingling of races. The white heat of revival initially…
“A key function in most religions,” write Michael Emerson and Christian Smith ( Divided By Faith ) “is to proclaim what ought to be, what is universally true, what is right and just. We call this the prophetic voice” (163). American religion, however, fragments this prophetic voice, even within the…
Leviticus 1-3 form a unit. 1:1 begins with “Yahweh called to Moses and spoke to him,” and a similar phrase, ‘Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying” shows up in 4:1. Chapters 1-3 form a single speech from God. The chapters cover three offerings: the ascension ( ‘olah ), the tribute of…
One the features of denominational Christianity highlighted by David Martin is a distinctive mode of sacramental theology that he labels “subjective.” Unlike sects, denominations retain sacraments; unlike the church, the sacrament is less the work of God than the expression of the worshiper. The contours of his characterization are worth…
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