Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Meanings of Remembrance Both Luke’s account of the upper room (Luke 22:14–23) and Paul’s recounting in 1 Corinthians 11:23–25 record Jesus’ words that the Supper in the distribution of bread: “do this in remembrance of me” (τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν). 1 1 Corinthians 11:25 repeats the words in…
Genesis is a story of brotherly violence. Cain kills Abel. Jacob flees from Esau, his brother, to live with Laban, his mother’s brother, and ends up in a conflict with him too. Joseph’s brothers assault him, sell him away as a slave, and fake his death. All of this frames…
America is like a secular Holy Roman Empire. Contrary to dissidents who expect a collapse of the federal government, the implosion of the fiat dollar, or a national divorce into Jesusland and the United States of Canada, America will persist. Whether as a world hegemon or regional superpower, there is…
Many readers of the New Testament will, at some point or other, be troubled by the question of why Jesus’ earthly ministry did not address the Roman occupation. Perhaps as a child in Sunday school you were taught that the Jews were expecting a military deliverer, and that the form…
In a recent tweet , which he later expanded into a Substack post , Aaron Renn wrote about the importance of ‘picking the right ladders to climb’. One of our most critical life decisions, Renn argues, is that of choosing the right ‘status hierarchies’ to which we will commit ourselves;…
The Third Use of the Created Word “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” Those words are reflexive for almost any Anglican. Repeated nine times weekly at least during Lent and Advent if not year round, they are said between 54 and 468 times…
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Burckhardt notes the parallels between the nobility of late antique Persia and the knights of the Western middle ages: “The nobility itself, with its bluff chivalry, is quite Western. Its formal relationship to the King appears to have bene feudal; its principal obligation was assistance in war. As represented in…
A sentence from Burckhardt’s description of the Persian campaigns of Galerius: “But two indecisive battles and a third which Galerius lost through excessive boldness again drenched with Roman blood the desolate plain between Carrhae and the Euphrates where Crassus had once led ten legions to their death.” What does one…
Burckhardt once again, describing the spread of Semitic religion through the empire: “From the Old Testament, we know Baalzebub, Baalpeor, Baalberith, and the like, whose names may have been long forgotten. In Palmyra Baal seems to have been divided into two divinities for sun and moon, as Aglibol and Malachbel,…
Burckhardt again, describing the Roman spread of the Isis cult: “Roman arms spread the worship of Isis to the frontiers of the Empire, in the Netherlands as in Switzerland and South Germany. It penetrated private life more thoroughly and earlier than the cult of the great Semitic goddess.” Thus an…
Jacob Burckhardt ( Age of Constantine the Great ) describes the temple of Isis at Hieropolis: “Its Ionic colonnades resting upon masonry terraces with huge propylaea, upon a hill which towered over the city, made a brilliant and conspicuous spectacle. It is remarkable that this temple precinct, with its wild…
For many throughout church history, fasting is bound up with hostility to matter and the body. We refrain from bodily pleasures of food and drink to train our souls in disembodied life. That’s not biblical. The biblical fast, as Isaiah 58 puts it, is to share food with the hungry…
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