Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This newsletter summarizes everything that has been written and argued in Biblical Chronology to date. The Bible is filled with chronological information. Some would dismiss the idea that this chronological information can and should be systematized. We have to say, however, that if the scattered information about the tri-unity of…
At the Biblical Horizons Conference on Worship and Sacrifice , held 17-21 August, 1992, we explored the meaning of the five major sacrifices in considerable depth. 1 During the last, the centrality of the male lamb (the ram) in the sacrificial system was briefly discussed. I want in this essay…
As we saw last time, Uzziah became king of Judah in the 27th year of Jeroboam II, the year A.M. 3204. He reigned for 52 years. He was basically a good and devout king, but toward the end of his life he recapitulated the fall of Adam by trying to…
We have now arrived at the reign of Jeroboam II. When Jeroboam II came to the throne of Northern Israel, Amaziah was reigning in Judah. After the death of Amaziah, there was an interregnum of eleven years, during which Judah was governed by Israel. During those years, the son of…
Several years ago I wrote an essay, “Theses on Paedocommunion,” in which I argued that allowing all baptized and non-excommunicated persons to the table of the Lord was Biblical and desirable. (A copy of this essay is available for a donation from Biblical Horizons .) During the past several years…
The question of whether the Church stands “against” culture, is “of” or “above” culture, or seeks to “transform” culture cannot be answered in abstraction from a particular cultural context. To be sure, in many ways the Church’s message and relation to the world cannot change; the Church must, in season…
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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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