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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Israel’s priests did not inherit land. Many lived in cities and they possessed the land immediately surrounding. But they did not get a separate plot when the land was divided. Yahweh said He was their inheritance (Numbers 18:19), and He said it chiastically: A. In the land you will not…
Christoph Schwobel’s contribution to Justification in a Post-Christian Society is characteristically grand. Exploring what contribution Lutheranism can make to contemporary society, he focuses on central Lutheran concerns - promise and trust. His explanation of the grammar of promise is densely brilliant: “The central distinction between law and gospel only becomes…
Christoph Schwobel’s analysis of promising ( Justification in a Post-Christian Society ) opens out into a discussion of theology proper with a reference to Luther’s claim that God identifies Himself in Exodus 3:14 as the God who promises Himself, “so that this promise is God’s essence in relation to which…
“We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might…
In his study of Calvin’s Company of Pastors , Scott Manetsch estimates that “just under 5 percent of all excommunications” in Geneva were imposed because of “Catholic behavior” (203). By this phrase, he refers to “instances where people voluntarily aligned themselves with some dimension of Roman Catholic faith or practice,…
Adam Smith wrote, briefly in several places, of an invisible hand that guided economic life. The work of this invisible hand was to bend self-interested actions to socially beneficent ends. As Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations : “By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry,…
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