Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
When I became a Calvinist it wasn't long before I learned that John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ was regarded as the masterful treatise on what is known as "Limited Atonement"--the "L" in the TULIP mnemonic device for "the five points of Calvinism." This wasn't…
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…
The Feast of Ingathering in the seventh month of the Sinaitic calendar is also called the Feast of Sukkoth, of Booths, also called Feast of Tabernacles. I have usually called it by that last phrase, and it is the most common today; but there is a problem: A tabernacle is…
When Matthew’s Gospel was first read aloud to the fledgling Christian congregations, the experience must have been like seeing the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” appear afresh on cinema screens in 1999. Yet, unlike The Phantom Menace, the New Testament did not disappoint. Why?…
Fragmentation and integration are phenomena which artist Makoto Fujimura feels bodily, and about which he is concerned profoundly. What do these mean for him? How may we draw his insights into this ongoing consideration—itself integrative—of integration in a fragmented world? Thus far I have been acquainting you with matters already…
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Ruth 1:22: So Naomi returned and with her Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who returned from the land of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Ruth begins tragically. Elimelech flees from famine in Bethlehem by taking his wife and sons to Moab, where…
Ruth 1:21: Naomi said, I went out full, but Yahweh has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since Yahweh has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me? Ruth’s statement of faith is one of the most memorable and moving in Scripture. It is a…
Modern politics, we often think, is secular politics. Alexis de Tocqueville knew better. He observed that the French Revolution “took on the appearance of a religious revolution.” It was, he admitted, “a new kind of religion, an incomplete religion . . . without God, without ritual, and without life after…
In a lecture on incarnation and kenosis, Princeton’s Bruce McCormack asks John of Damascus how he can say that every act of the God-Man is “100% human and 100% divine.” Won’t the omnipotent divine act overwhelm the human act? That’s an odd question, I think. For, given divine concurrence, the…
Wise cautions from de Lubac on any effort to ease the tensions that have historically existed between church and civil order: “We can without difficulty concede the point that whichever side the absorption were effected from, everything would become infinitely simpler and much more practicable - in theory, at any…
De Lubac quotes Thomas a Kempis to the effect that “when the consummation comes, the sacraments will be employed no more,” and explains: “Human mediation, now indispensable and of primary importance, will have no raison d’etre in the Heavenly Jerusalem; there, everyone will hear God’s voice directly and everyone will…
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