Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In my last essay, we saw how consumer culture has gutted the familial category necessary to understand the church. When a consumer visits a church, he expects another service-provider, such as a hospital or a restaurant. He doesn’t understand the role of men in ministry, and thus, not the role…
First time visitors to our church sometimes express their surprise that children, even the youngest, participate with their parents in the entire worship service. Many congregations created an expectation for the parents (and children) of Sunday School or Child Care being available during the entire worship service or during the…
Quantifying the Love of God “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” ~ John 3:16 This most beloved verse in all the Bible was spoken by the Savior himself to Nicodemus. As…
While The Lord’s Prayer enjoys wide recognition throughout the Church, its richness and depth may be unrealized due to a lesser familiarity with, what I will argue is, its primary inspiration: the Tabernacle. There, Christ’s intent can rightly be discerned. The Prayer’s methodological correction to the Jews and Gentiles wasn’t…
The Consumption of the Covenant Idea of the Church Last time we saw consumerism, having canalized its attitudes in our culture, shapes what the consumer sees when he or she steps into a church. Here, we’ll see how it has eviscerated the covenant and familial ideas necessary to understand the…
The ignoble Jayber Crow can stir your appetite for the noble. It’s the simplicity of a good ol’ Port William boy that builds the charm of the book. In fact, the elitists in Port William receive the harshest blows and severest outcomes, as they should. But before delving into the…
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Christopher Warner argues in The Augustinian Epic that Renaissance epic and medieval exegesis share two crucial features. First, both share an interest in history, but one that aims to peer behind the veil of fact into the allegorical meaning of facts. Petrarch’s epic of the Second Punic War and Tasso’s…
At the beginning of Revelation, the Spirit speaks to the seven churches. At the end, the voice of the bride and the voice of the Spirit become one, speaking a single wish: Come, Lord Jesus. By suffering with the Bridegroom, the bride learns His dialect. She becomes attuned to His…
Dennis Pardee’s Ritual and Cult at Ugarit collects texts that are relevant to Ugaritic cult, especially sacrificial cult. He ends the book with a helpful survey of the similarities and differences between Ugarit and the Bible. One of the differences has to do with the use of blood. “The blood…
The Lego movie has a cutting-edge social message, writes Ben Walters in The Guardian : “The film’s exuberant, kid-friendly larks – Wild West! Robot pirates! Unicorn kittens! Batman! – are laced with satirical digs at surveillance culture, built-in obsolescence and police brutality, as well as inane positive thinking. Its opening…
Gary Shteyngart writes in The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2007): “A knowledgeable Russian lazing around in the grass, sniffing clover and munching on boysenberries, expects that at any minute the forces of history will drop by and discretely kick him in the ass. “A knowledgeable Jew in a similar position expects…
Sean McDonough’s YHWH at Patmos (1999) is a 250+ page book about a single verse, Revelation 1:4. Really, only one phrase of that verse: “He who is and who was and who is coming.” McDonough traces the pre-history of the phrase to the name Yahweh. More surprisingly, he finds precedent…
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