Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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Matthew 10:10: The worker is worthy of his nourishment. Jesus sent the Twelve out with no means of support – no food, no money to purchase food, no extra clothes. They were to be like Israel, relying on the Lord to maintain them as they went out into the wilderness.…
Matthew 10:8: freely you received; freely give. The Twelve are not like the rest of Israel, lost sheep and oppressed. They have a shepherd, a good shepherd, the best shepherd, who summons, calls them, commissions them, heals them, sustains them, feeds them, cares for them. They have received all this…
“I love Jesus, but I can’t stand the church. I obey Jesus, but I won’t submit to any human authorities.” We hear these sentiments a lot in American Christianity. American Christians like to separate Jesus from His people, the Shepherd’s authority from the authority of His undershepherds. Jesus doesn’t allow…
Jesus sends the Twelve to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That fits the biblical pattern of “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Israel is the first site of mission. For many, though, the mission to Israel is a quick stepping stone to the mission…
Daniel Patte points out in his “structural commentary” on Matthew that there is a narrative logic to Matthew 8-13. Jesus comes healing, casting out demons, cleansing the unclean, raising the dead, all the while proclaiming the reign of God that these miracles incarnate. In chapter 10, He sends the Twelve…
Shakespeare’s Claudio and Hero are usually played as palely conventional lovers, a foil to the sparkling sparring of Benedick and Beatrice. A recent British National Theatre production of Much Ado gives a more colorful Claudio and Hero. According to the TLS reviewer, Laurie Maguire, “Claudio (Daniel Hawkesford) is alarmed by…
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