Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…
“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…
Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…
Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…
In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…
I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…
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Mathew Kuefler ( The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) ) notes that the traditional Roman patria potestas , and the male sexual privileges associated with it, were already waning in the early empire. But Constantine gave…
Radner has these final comments on the hermeneutics of the “holiness code”: “The difference between the sexual laws of Lev. 18 and the laws of clean and unclean flesh in Lev. 11 cannot simply lie in their respective relation to teh category of ceremonial character. The difference lies in the…
Radner finds part of the fulfillment of the figures of Leviticus 18 in the genealoty of Jesus. On the one hand, Jesus’ own genealogy includes sexually illicit acts (Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba) and the various sins (not only sexual, but idolatry and oppression) represented in the genealogy eventually lead to Israel’s…
In dealing with the sexual legislation of Leviticus 18, Ephraim Radner ( Leviticus (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) ) employs a figural/prophetic framework rather than a more traditional ceremonial/moral one. The results are intriguing. The prohibition of adultery, for instance, is “fulfilled by means of confession, self-recognition, forgiveness, and…
Drake notes the unique “democratic” flavor of the churcfh in the fourth century: “Christianity restored to common people an outlet for popular participation which they were denied in imperial politics. Eusebius [of Caesarea’s] awkward letter to his confregation from Nicaea, Constantine’s frequent letters to the Christians of Nicomedia, Alexandria, or…
Xenophon’s Cyrus provides a good illustration of Elias’s theory: “He trained his associates also not to spit or to wipe the nose in public, and not to turn round to look at anything, as being men who wondered at nothing. All this he thought contributed, in some measure, to their…
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