Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In our first essay we looked at Kline’s flawed exegesis of Genesis 2:5 as it relates to Day 3 of creation. Now we turn to Kline’s new argument against a chronological reading of Genesis 1, as found, again, in "Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony," Perspectives on Science and…
One of the advantages of paying very close attention to the details in the Bible, especially chronological and genealogical details, is that they can shed light on situations that don’t seem to make much sense apart from them. One such situation is that of Bathsheba. It appears that Bathsheba willingly…
Once upon a time, Jeff Meyers and Tony Rollins–old friends who had not seen each other for a few years–met in the parking lot of a neighborhood church. They were dropping off their pre-school children at the church for Mother’s Day Out. They were such conscientious and helpful fathers. As…
Years ago, when I was at the briefly-existing Geneva Divinity School, I taught a course in the Apocrypha. One thing that struck me at that time is that two of the stories are almost certainly religious allegories (as well as moral tales): Judith and Susanna. Since "Susanna" means "Lily," this…
Peter’s essay inspires me to write up some similar thoughts about the flower of the field. Rightly does Peter associate the almond with Yahweh’s garden, because the Garden of Eden is symbolically positioned as parallel to the Holy Place of the Tabernacle and Temple. To wit: Since Aaron’s rod blossomed…
We have had occasion to discuss the views of Meredith G. Kline previously in these newsletters, and now it is time to do so again. Kline teaches at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and also at the Westminster Theological Seminaries (Philadelphia and San Diego). He is the author of some interesting insights…
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In his lovely book of meditations on art, New York City, 9/11, American culture, Japan, and Christianity ( Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture ), Makoto Fujimura tells the story of Sen no Rikyu, “the sixteenth-century tea master who is most responsible for the development of the art…
Toward the end of “On Seeking God,” Nicholas of Cusa has this to say: “when an artists seeks the face of a king in a block of wood, the artists rejects everything else that is limited except the face itself.  For the artist sees in the wood, through the concept…
Mary Douglas highlighted the analogies between body and social body in her work on Levitical defilements.  Protecting the integrity and wholness of the individual body symbolized the aspirations of Israelite society for a whole and well-protected social body, without intrusions from outside or seepage from inside. At the same time,…
Mary Douglas writes in Leviticus As Literature that the word translated as “swarming” or “creeping” should instead be translated as “teeming,” with its connotations of fertility.  Israel is to avoid teeming things, Douglas argues, because Israel is to make a distinction between covenant and fertility.  Israel is not to hate…
Nazirites were separated to Yahweh’s service and devoted to His holy war.  Priests too were “separated” ( nazir , Leviticus 22:2). But Israel as a whole was a nation of devoted warriors.  That is the whole rationale for the laws of cleanliness, that the sons of Israel will be “nazired”…
Von Balthasar says that the “ethos of the theology in Bonaventure is . . . quite different from the ethos in Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophical point of view tries to reflect the order of the world as rigorously and clearly as possible.  In Bonaventure, there is something defeated from the…
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