Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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Coleridge, on the other hand, stood up for Bertram: “I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the critics have poured out upon Bertram in All’s Well that ends Well . He was a young nobleman in feudal times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings of pride of…
Samuel Johnson said of Bertram in Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well : “I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram, a man noble without generosity, and young without truth, who marries Helena as a coward and leaves her as a profligate; when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home…
Belated help for a friend: Pastor Ralph Smith of the Mitaka Evangelical Church in Tokyo has produced an course entitled “Shakespeare the Christian.” The lectures cover Shakespeare’s debts to Christianity and his use of the Bible, and then analyze 10 of the plays in detail. Ralph has done his homework,…
Augustine on Psalm 149: “Chorus Christi jam totus mundus est.” Christ’s choir is now the whole world.
Behind Varro’s classification of Roman religion into mythical, natural, and civic, Augustine discerns an interest, and a political one. Varro speaks harshly about the mythic or fabulous religions, for violating the dignity of immortal gods. Yet, the classification system serves to protect civic religion from similar condemnation. On Augustine’s reading,…
Augustine quotes Cicero saying, “quae harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, eam esse in civitate concordiam.” That is, somewhat loosely, “what musicians call harmony in singing is concord in the city.”
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