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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One of the most annoying things about critical biblical scholarship is the way that every discussion has to contribute to questions of composition, authorship, historical setting, etc. Harrington gives a very intriguing paper on holiness in Ezra-Nehemiah, but the whole thing is part of a “larger” argument about the common…
Hannah Harrington gave a very fine presentation on the holiness and purity terminology in Ezra and Nehemiah. She showed that these post-exilic texts display an expansion of holy space to encompass the whole city as well as an expansion of the duties of Levites, a closing of the gap between…
John Milbank claims that the Wellhausen documentary hypothesis is shaped by what he calls the “liberal Protestant metanarrative,” the view that Christianity moved from a religion of inner simplicity to a religion of complex external ritual (JEDP traces this story). In his SBL presentation, Nick Perrin of Wheaton showed how…
Carl Mosser of Eastern College gave a superb presentation on deification at the ETS meeting. A large part of the presentation was a study of terminology. He noted that the Greek work THEOS (often thought to be equivalent to “God”) had a broader meaning, referring to powers that were immortal,…
A few further scattered comments from and on Latour. 1) He disputes the notion that the modern world is disenchanted, claiming that the claim of disenchantment is merely the reflex of the Constitution of modernity and its premise that We are completely different from Them. He also attributes the modern…
Some reflections based on an ETS talk by Edward Meadors on Romans 9-11. Meadors suggested that “Esau” in Romans 9 refers to Esau as the patriarch of Edom, well-known for its opposition to Israel throughout the centuries. That is Malachi’s focus in the passage Paul cites. And this is set…
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