Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(continued from previous issue) Between 30 and 50 What did the Levites do between age 30 and 50? Numbers 4 shows us that they carried the house of God on their shoulders. Lifting up the Lord is an image of worship in the Bible, and David’s restructuring of the Levites…
When God created the world, He created two lands: the Throne-land of Eden (entered through the sanctuary-garden, the Garden of Eden), and the Outlying Lands, such as the lands of Havilah and Cush. This essentially bi-polar world is the world of the Old Creation, and it continued to exist until…
Color is inescapable, except for those who are color blind. In our church architecture, we either employ color schemes that are helpful to worship, or we employ color schemes that are not helpful. Of course, this assertion merely begs the question: What color schemes are most helpful. God showed interest…
As I noted in an earlier article in Rite Reasons , the Church Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine all claimed that baptism inducts the baptized person into membership in the royal priesthood of the church, and Thomas Aquinas said that baptism, by imprinting an indelible “character” on the soul, confers…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
In my Preliminary Commentary on Daniel , which many of you have obtained, I argued in chapter 13 that the four monsters called up from the sea by the evangelistic work of the four winds (the saints) represented the deep hatred of God that evangelistic work brings to the fore…
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David Cunningham writes, “What was one a ‘kiss of peace,’ uniting bodies in an almost frighteningly intimate way, now often consists only of a tentative handshake and a mumbled greeting.  Of course, this does still provide an opportunity to meet the other face to face, body to body; and so…
In his Adults and Children in the Roman Empire (1989), Thomas Wiedemann remarks on the difference between pagan and Christian conceptions of infant death: “For the pagan, premature death was a disaster because the child’s life was wasted; for Augustine, a child who died prematurely might have had as complete…
A friend, Aaron Cummings, writes in response to my comments about Derrida and prodigal words: “A few days ago, you alluded to Derrida, that words run prodigal from the speaker/writer. You said that this was true of Mankind’s words, but not of God’s. It seems to me that this is…
For Athanasius, creation’s multiplicity is not a defect but part of its glory.  No created thing supplies all need; no single light illuminates day and night.  So there are many lights.  Each light is its own essence, but these essences cooperate to fill what is lacking in the others.  The…
Arianism is not just about Christology.  It’s about theology proper. Arius said that God made His Son before the creation because the creation could not endure the “untempered hand” of the Father.  It needed the Son as mediator.  Athanasius sees in this a false idea of God.  God, He says,…
Athanasius notes that before the incarnation humanity was under the dominion of false gods, enslaved to corruption and idolatry.  The Word took flesh to deliver us from that slavery, and the form of that deliverance was an act of worship: “in this body offering Himself for all, He might deliver all from false worship and…
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