Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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The macro-structures of The Fairie Queene become clear if we look at a single book in detail. Book 1 is a good place to start. It is the story of Holiness, focused on the Redcrosse Knight and Una. Redcrosse is called upon to rescue the parents of a damsal in…
John Podhoretz ( Weekly Standard , March 2) admits that he giggled his way through Fifty Shades of Grey . The movie. He doesn't seem in a giggly mood about the novels, which he describes as “the worst books I have every read all the way through.” But Podhoretz spots…
Theodore Vial's Liturgy Wars is a rich and detailed account of the struggle over the change in the baptismal rite in 19th-century Zurich. He picks the knot of this culture war, unraveling the political, theological, and ritual dimensions of the the battle between liberalizing and conserving forces. Vial's aims go…
Chris Jenks argues in Subculture that “postmodernism’s critical imperative recommending the end of grand narratives is an invitation to dispense with the power/knowledge, truth and authority on which society, and, in many senses, the social bond, of yesterday were established” (3). One of the key theoretical tools has been an…
Brian Howell's In the Eyes of God is a substantial contribution to the discussion of theological language and to our understanding of the workings of biblical anthropomorphism. His approach rests on the “three legs” of “the biblical depiction of the divine-human relationship, divine Speech Acts, and context-sensitive metaphorical interpretation” (57).…
David Hawkes's TLS review of Marisa Cull's Shakespeare's Princes of Wales sums up the influence of Wales on Elizabethan England, and on England's Bard in particular: “The Bard (the very term has a specifically Welsh provenance) had a Welsh grandmother, Alys Griffin. The man who taught him his ‘small Latin,'…
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