Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary : The Bible is a multi-faceted text. As a result, it can fruitfully be analyzed in many ways. Pace, context, flow, imagery: all of these aspects of the Biblical text are significant and instructive. Here, by way of illustration, I analyze Gen. 38 in a range of different ways,…
Summary: The Bible is a multi-faceted text. As a result, it can fruitfully be analysed in many ways. Pace, context, flow, imagery: all of these aspects of the Biblical text are significant and instructive. Here, by way of illustration, I analyse Gen. 38 in a range of different ways, and…
The closing chapters of the Bible bring to fulfillment the mission inaugurated in the opening chapters of the Bible: the dwelling place of God expands to fill the entire new creation. The story of Scripture concludes having achieved God’s original intent for His people in the Garden of Eden, and…
Oddly, the nature of pre -modern economies plays a central role in today’s policy debate over economic globalization and neo-liberalism. Analysts take ancient non-market economies as the standard against which to measure the economic and social effects of the market system. Scholars compare the distribution of economic goods and services…
In part one of this essay, I mentioned that the story of Zacchaeus includes not only many details that point to other passages in Luke, but also details that point to the Old Testament, though we might not initially think of them. The first detail I have in mind is…
The story of Zacchaeus includes numerous interesting details that link this story with others in the Gospel of Luke. There are also details that tie the story of Zacchaeus to the Old Testament in ways that we might not initially take note of. In the Gospel of Luke, the story…
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W hen Jesus condemns hypocrisy, argues Oliver O'Donovan ( Desire of Nations , 109–10), He is speaking of conformity to “public expectation.” O'Donovan suggests that the sense is captured by the word “performance.” Jesus is not speaking of motives in the modern sense of the word: “A motive, as we…
W hy didn't the apostles move more quickly to protest and attempt to abolish slavery? There are various answers to that, but Oliver O'Donovan's gets to the heart of the issue: The church “believed that Christ had abolished it” ( Desire of Nations , 185). Of course, the church had…
P hilip Rieff notes, “That word [ Kulturkampf ] first appeared in common German use in the early 1870s during the struggle of the National Liberal political party to disarm by law the moral/educational authority, and political punditry, of a triumphalist Roman Catholic hierarchy, revitalized as it then was by…
K. Luria examines the Sacred Boundaries (xxvii–xxxxi) of early modern France, in an effort to correct extremes of historiography. Some have argued that sacred boundaries between religious groups led to violence; other historians have pointed to continuous interaction between Catholics and Protestants. Both are right. Symbolic boundaries separated Catholic and…
A 1989 article by Wolfgang Reinhard on the relationships among the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and early modern state-building is an excellent brief summary of the relationship between Reformation and post-Reformation “confessionalization” and the formation of modern states and national identities. The Reformers' turn to the state was in the first instance…
O verall, the Chronicler's account of Solomon's temple construction (2 Chronicles 3:1-5:1) is arranged chiastically: A. Solomon begins to build, 3:1-2 B. What Solomon made, 3:3-4:10 C. What Huram-abi made, 4:11-17 B’. What Solomon made, 4:18-22 A’. Solomon completes ( shalam ) work, 5:1 The long section in B is…
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