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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If the fathers have already explained the Scriptures, Andrew of St. Victor asked, why do I need to? He answered that truth dwells “deep” and “screens herself from mortal sight.” There is always more truth to dig up because truth “hides, yet so as never wholly to be hidden. Careful…
England’s economy in Austen’s time was still dominated by land ownership. Land was the most settled and permanent form of wealth, and writers like Coleridge and Burke asserted that landownership formed a “natural” governing class that had a physical stake in the nation. In 1710, Parliament enacted property qualifications for…
In 1767, one N. Foster wrote, “In England the several ranks of men slide into each other almost imperceptibly, and a spirit of equality runs through every part of their constitution. Hence arises a strong emulation in all the several stations and conditions to vie with each other; and the…
In the 1982 symposium, The Birh of a Consumer Society , Neil McKendrick identifies some of the chief features of the demand-side of the social and economic of the 18th century. What did it mean for England to become a “consumer society”? 1. More people than ever could acquire material…
Samuel Johnson recognized the character of avertising quite early. he noted in 1761 that “advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.” And he saw that…
Seen in the advertising section of many 18th-century English newspapers: “a fine young breast of milk willing to enter a gentleman’s household.” Presumably attached to a wet nurse. And an advertisement for a bed that “at the head . . . in the full centre front, appears sparkling with electrical…
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