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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Athanasius points out to Marcellinus that the Psalms cover every “eventuality.”  They are a mirror of the soul because they are a mirror of human experience - of suffering, of desperation, of exultation, of thanksgiving, of prosperity, of adversity, of garden and wilderness, of isolation and communion, and on and…
No one would dare, Athanasius writes to Marcellinus, to take the words of the patriarchs, or Moses, or the prophets as his own.  No one would dare imitate the prophets by saying “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand today.” The Psalms are different.  When someone reads, hears, chants,…
Paul ends 1 Corinthians (16:22) with a neat chiastic sign-off.  Anyone who does not love the Lord is declared “accursed” ( anathema ) and Paul follows this with the cry of maranatha (“the Lord comes”).  Anath-ma/mar-anatha . Substantively, it is a striking phrase.   Anathema speaks a harsh word of…
In his superb introduction to the New City Press edition of  Augustine’s de Trinitate ( Trinity, The (Works of Saint Augustine A Translation for the 21st Century) ), Edmund Hill offers a chiastic outline of the treatise: 1. Introduction, 1 2. Divine missions: exegetical, 2-4 3. Trinitarian language: philosophical, 5-7…
In Epistle 11, Augustine attempts to explain an apparent contradiction in the Catholic faith.  On the one hand, all of God does all that God does, since the Persons of the Trinity are inseparable and act inseparably: “For the union of Persons in the Trinity is in the Catholic faith set forth and believed, and…
David Garland comments that the first part of Matthew’s Passion narrative (26:2-56) begins with the plot of the priests and elders and then is divided into six scenes: 1. Anointing for burial, 26:6-13 2. Judas’ betrayal, 26:14-15 3. Preparation for Passover, 26:17-19 4. Last Supper, 26:20-30 5. Prediction that the…
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