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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Vico was not opposed to logic, but thought that its centrality in modern educational systems was damaging: “it throws into utter confusion, in our adolescents, those powers of the youthful mind each of which should be regulated by a systematic study of specific subject matters; as, for instance, memory by…
Donald Verene writes that Vico’s opposition to Descartes and Cartesian thought rests on a “different conception of man.” For Vico, humans are “an integrality (not sheer rationality, not mere intellect, but also fantasy, passion, emotion),” and Verene also remarks on Vico’s “insistence on the historical and social dimension” of human…
In his Schmalkald Articles (1538), Luther begins with a brief statement about justification through Christ by faith. Later in the articles he returns to the issue of the gospel, and intriguingly introduces the sacraments as one of the “helps” that God provides against sin: “We now want to return to…
Hamann address his first dedication to his Socratic Memorabilia “To the Public, or, Nobody, the Well-Known.” The dedication begins with a concatenation of biblical polemics against idols: “You bear a name and need no proof of your existence, you find faith and do no miracles to earn it, you get…
Hamann’s style was as critical to his protest against Kant and the Encyclopedists as the content of his opaque essays. As Kenneth Haynes points out in the introduction to the recent Cambridge volume of Hamann’s writings, “The style he cultivated was the opposite of that of the Encyclopedie , obscure…
Hamann’s style was as critical to his protest against Kant and the Encyclopedists as the content of his opaque essays. As Kenneth Haynes points out in the introduction to the recent Cambridge volume of Hamann’s writings, “The style he cultivated was the opposite of that of the Encyclopedie , obscure…
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