Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery (Revelation 12:1-2). Then Joshua spoke…
In his post asking Ought we Anoint the Dying? Peter Leithart makes an excellent and important point about our suffering as members of Christ. However, he only parenthetically mentions that the verb in question in James 5 is not chrio but aleipho . By assuming that these words are interchangeable,…
We spend a lot of time in the church talking about what it means to live like a Christian. But what does it mean to die like a Christian? If we are to follow Christ in life, what does it mean for us to follow him in death as well?…
How would one go about answering the question posed by my title? That depends on what the question means. Obviously, different definitions of the question would require different approaches to an answer. Right off hand, I can think of at least three possible — though not necessarily mutually exclusive —…
In recent weeks and months, we have seen events that are not the event. The drama around these events is not the events themselves, but the anxiety about the events, and then even the anxiety about the anxiety about the events. That is the real event. The events in Ferguson,…
Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that…
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Protestants have often been charged with promoting an individualist reading of Scripture, what with our confession of sola scriptura . That charge, I submit, arises from a misunderstanding of what the Bible is. In Psalm 119:24, the Psalmist declares his delight in the “testimonies” of Yahweh, and adds that these…
Greeks have a reputation for Apollonian rationality and calm, but that’s at best only part of the story. In the NYTBR , Caroline Alexander describes the Dionysian underside of classical Greece: “On Mount Lykaion (‘wolf mountain” in Arcadia, annual traditions honoring Zeus re-enacted a seminal rite of human sacrifice. In…
Richard Beck responds to my review of his Slavery of Death at the Trinity House site.
Mark W. Elliott’s Engaging Leviticus is a compendium of historical commentary on the book of Leviticus. Organized chapter-by-chapter, Elliott draws together patristic, medieval, and modern commentators, mostly Christian but including some Jewish commentators along the way. That organization creates some difficulties for the reader. Elliott’s book is packed with information,…
Origen interpreted the instructions about leprosy (Leviticus 13-14) as an “anatomy of spiritual disease” (Elliott, Engaging Leviticus , 132): “There are six types of spiritual plague, which can be taken as three pairs of types - each pair composed of disease that is curable (in this life) and incurable (in…
I want to talk about death. No, the flowers haven’t confused me. I’m aware that this is a wedding and not a funeral, but still: I intend to talk about death. What I want to talk about is real death. I’m not using the word metaphorically. I want to talk…
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