Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). The famous definition of faith with which the eleventh chapter of Hebrews opens has received a number of different interpretations. The crux of the problem is the interpretation of the words translated in…
This essay is an exploration of one element of the final of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John. My thesis is that the Gospel of John answers the issue of "friendship" being a homoerotic category. It challenges the "Greek Way of Love and Friendship" 1 It is indeed the…
"And I also way to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it" (Matthew 16:18). Matthew 16:13ff. has historically been one of the most oft-cited passages of Scripture. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was used…
Matthew 8-9 records three clusters of miracles, interspersed with snatches of Jesus’ teaching about various aspects of discipleship. Just as the Sermon on the Mount displays the authority of Jesus’ Word in teaching, these chapters display the authority of Jesus’ Word over sickness, uncleanness, the creation, demons, and death. In…
The association of women and wells in the Scriptures has long been noted by theologians, a symbolism closely connected to marriage which begins in Genesis and climaxes in Revelation. There is a lesson drawn in the water of wells that I’d like to explore, but before that I must trace…
Of course, since the Israelites had agriculture, Solomon was not paleolithic as that term is used today. But "paleo" is simply a prefix meaning old or previous , the opposite of "neo." In that sense, I wonder if we might understand Solomon better if we interpret his statements and riddles…
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Jan Swafford’s biography of Beethoven, Anguish and Triumph , recounts the composer’s physical ailments in squirm-inducing detail: “deafness, colitis, rheumatism, rheumatic fever, typhus, skin disorders, abscesses, a variety of infections, ophthalmia, inflammatory degeneration of the arteries, jaundice and at the end chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.” The NYTBR…
Death, Disability, and the Superhero (forthcoming) by Joe Alaniz is more jargon-ridden than the average cultural study, which is of course saying a lot. That’s unfortunate, because the topic is of some interest. Alaniz summarizes the psychoanalytic, religious, and other studies of the superhero phenomenon, pointing out the obvious that…
Karen Piper’s Price of Thirst is an expose of the global cabal of five companies that controls some 73% of the world’s private water supplies. Private companies provide an increasing proportion of water: “By 2025, the number of people served by private water companies is predicted to reach 21%. In…
In a typically dense, brilliant essay in the Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology , Milbank argues that without faith in resurrection there is no ethical. Resurrection is the extreme Christian form of the embrace of moral luck, the basis for a Christian eudaemonism. From this conclusion, Milbank teases out three…
In an insightful reflection on Derrida’s essay on the apocalyptic tone in philosophy, Walter Lowe ( Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Philosophy ) observes that “Kant has ruled appeals to immediacy to be out of order in the court of reason.” Derrida “inquires whether Kant himself can abide by this rule.…
Jesus promises that those who are thirsty can drink from Jesus. Those who drink/believe not only have their thirst assuaged. They become springs of refreshing, living water - John tells us the water is the Spirit (John 7:37-39). But living water is not only refreshing water. Most of the time,…
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