Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Several weeks ago, a picture of a man working at Trader Joe’s went viral. At first glance, it was hard to tell what was worthy of note in the picture—a man simply standing near a cash register. It turns out, the picture went viral not because of what the man…
Among the many allusions in the transfiguration story, one allusion, or rather, one group of allusions, is especially prominent — allusions to Mt. Sinai. The first and least obvious of the allusions to Mt. Sinai is the expression “high mountain” in Matthew and Mark and “the mountain” in Luke. Ancient…
The revelation of Jesus’ glory at the transfiguration is one of the most important stories in the synoptic Gospels. At Jesus’ baptism — the inauguration of New Covenant baptism with the Holy Spirit and the paradigm for Christian baptism — God the Father spoke from heaven: “You are My Son,…
The first section of Proverbs (chapters 1-9) contains two lengthy descriptions of temptations that a young man should resist and avoid (1:10-19 and 7). The two temptations are recruitment into a robber gang and being enticed by an adulterous wife. I've argued before that these are the two perversions of…
Is there a Gospel invitation? To many evangelical Christians, the answer to that question is an unqualified "yes." Some calvinists, reacting against the misleading character of the "altar call," seem less interested in inviting men to anything than they are in sending men away to think about the message they…
Effective pastoral care helps people progress to maturity. Historically, the Christian church worked out the sacramental system to assist people with the various conversions of life. While we Protestants believe in only two sacraments, it is helpful for us to look at the sacramental system, because there is some wisdom…
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John’s gospel is a contentious courtroom of a gospel. Legal language dominates the whole gospel - witnesses are called, Jesus promises an advocate, the Jews are constantly trying to put Jesus in the dock. But the whole gospel is really the trial of the Jews, just as what appears to…
Homer’s prologue to the Odyssey delays the identification of the hero until the end of the prologue, a literary sign that this hero comes hidden, disguised, in craft. That, of course, is precisely how Odysseus behaves throughout the epic. John’s gospel begins with similar techniques. We learn about the Word…
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus can be read as dramatizing the Augustinian perspective most recently articulated by Oliver O’Donovan, namely, that “within every political society there occurs, implicitly, an act of worship of divine rule.” Through his dramatization of Roman society, Shakespeare points to another act of worship that constitutes a different sort…
JL Austin famously distinguished between “performative” and “constative” utterances, the former of which perform the action to which they refer and the latter of which make assertions that can be judged as true or false. Modern philosophy has treated the constative as the norm, and performatives, if considered at all,…
How did the linguistic theory of Saussure become a model for anthropologists, sociologists, and analysts of pop culture? Jonathan Culler suggests that this move rests on “two fundamental insights: first, that social and cultural phenomena are not simply material objects or events but objects or events iwth meaning, and hence…
Foucault, in Canguilhem’s summary, argues that an anthropologization of the sciences took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when Kantian philosophy combined with biology, economics, and linguistics to raise the question What is Man? Foucault argues: “From the moment when life, work, and language ceased to be…
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