Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
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A ll theology is about God. All theology is theology proper. For Christian theology, the only God who is is the God who created this world. All theology is theology of creation. There is no God but the God of history, who chose Israel. All theology is covenant theology. There…
T he Lord's response to Solomon's prayer, and to Israel's song and sacrifice, is laid out in an interlocking series of chiasms (2 Chronicles 7:12–22). After an introductory notice that Yahweh appeared to Solomon by night (v. 12), the first, affirmative response is a pledge of God's presence and attention:…
I n The Watershed of Modern Politics , the last of a trilogy on the emergence of modern political thought from the Latin Middle Ages, Francis Oakley observes that “arguments based on secular political analogies, or arguments simply taking for granted something of a constitutional overlap between political and ecclesiastical…
T he Chronicler can't talk about praise without breaking out in praise. He can't describe Israel's worship without worshiping. This tic makes for some convolution. After the ark ascends to Zion and enters the tent of David, the Levitical singers praise Yahweh. The Chronicler writes, “And with [the priests] were…
P salm 72 is one of the most majestic, calmly triumphant Psalms in the Psalter. Attributed to Solomon, or written for Solomon, it is redolent of the glories of his reign. This king has received judgments from the God of Israel, and that enables him to pass judgment. Gifts from…
“P opulism seems more and more to be an inevitable drift of unqualified liberal democracy,” writes John Milbank (244). Well, duh, we might say, except that this appears in a book published in 2009 ( The Future of Love ), before Le Pen or Brexit or Trump were the stuff…
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