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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Mundus reconciliatus Ecclesia (Augustine, Sermon 96). “The world reconciled is the church.”
In his 1987 book on Thomas’s ecclesiology, George Sabra argues that Thomas does not teach that the church is a continuing incarnation. He definitely rejects any notion that the church is deified. If the notion of “continuing incarnation” simply means that the church continues the work of the incarnation, it…
Thomas wrote no treatise on the church, but Yves Congar, among others, insisted that the whole second part of the Summa is about ecclesiology. Thomas is telling a story of exodus and return, and the second part of his treatise is about the return effected by Christ and worked out…
In the Poetics , Aristotle gives a brief description of the character and history of comedy: ” Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type - not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the…
INTRODUCTION In the final chapter of his prophecy, Micah speaks in the first person, as the representative Israelite. In the midst of social chaos, he waits on Yahweh to show His righteousness. Someday, the Lord who treads on Judah’s high places (1:3) will tread her iniquities and cast them into…
In Micah 6:4, Yahweh reminds Judah, “I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” The “send before” reminds us of Yahweh’s promise to send His angel before Israel as they traveled through the wilderness and into the land. Moses, Aaron, and Miriam are human analogues to the Angel of Yahweh.…
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