Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The story of Judges 19 and the subsequent chapters are some of the most shocking and appalling accounts in all of Scripture. The callousness of the old host and the Levite, and the monstrous brutality of the men of Gibeah, leaves us feebly scrabbling for words by which to surmount…
David has become king. He has conquered the capital city of Jerusalem. He has brought the ark of Yahweh into the city and placed it in a tent. He has stationed Levites at the tent to offer sacrifices of praise. An anomaly hits him: He has a cedar-paneled palace, and…
In Part 2 of this series we traced what we have of the development of the epiclesis in the liturgy of the Church. In this third and final part we’ll look at the theological implications of this and how we may apply what we’ve learned. As we saw in Part…
In a 2014 piece published in First Things , I offered a "wish list" for Protestant churches, a checklist for a future catholic Protestantism. The wish list doesn't cover everything. It doesn't mention those things that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, already do, often exceedingly well, things like missions and evangelism and…
In the first part of this series we examined the meaning of “blessing” in Scripture and its parallels in Jewish liturgical tradition, but did not find anything that we could properly call an epiclesis (an invocation of the Holy Spirit). We did find examples of invocation of Jesus to “come”…
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…
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Another of my lectionary meditations is up at the Christian Century web site. You can find it at: http://www.theolog.org/blog/2008/06/blogging-towa-2.html#more.
Molly Worthen has an interesting piece on Rushdoony and Reconstructionism in the June issue of Church History . She is hardly uncritical, but also notes that even while “journalists have made too much of reconstructionism’s grip on mainstream evangelicalism, they ahve also overlooked its real significance in the development of…
Kruger again, speaking of the incarnation of the Son of God as a carpenter in Nazareth: “For at least a moment in history, human laughter, human sharing, human compassion, human love, human fellowship and comaraderie and togetherness were all more than human. For at least one moment in history, carpentry…
In his invigorating The Great Dance , C. Baxter Kruger asks which Adam we think is greater: “If the human race fell in a mere man named Adam, what happened to the human race in the death, resurrection and ascension of the incarnate Son of God? Why is it that…
Gracia’s entry is very good - a clearly written, thorough, stimulating summary of philosophical and literary debates about the meaning of meaning. He ends with the claim that theology “establishes not only textual meaning, but also the degree to which other factors play roles in the proper interpretation of Scriptures.”…
Gracia ultimately argues for a “cultural function” view of meaning. Cultural function goes beyond other factors that play a role in determining meaning “in that it establishes which of those factors take precedence over the others, and whether they are given any role in the determination of meaning.” For Gracia,…
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