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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The “new atheism” has given atheists in America a new lease on life, but there have been comparatively few studies of atheist beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences. Melanie Brewster’s compilation, Atheists in America , tries to fill that gap by presenting “voices of atheist individuals who represent a diverse array of…
At the New Republic , Anne Applebaum tries to pinpoint the genre of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices . Too superficial and sentimental to be a policy book, to guarded to be a memoir, too cliched to give insight into people or events, the book is best read, Applebaum argues, as…
Ancient Athens and the Renaissance are today seen as the two great peaks of Western Civilization. Renaissance thinkers would not have seen things that way. Obsessed with sources as they were, they wanted to push behind Rome to Greece and from Greece to Egypt. Those who were seeking an alternative…
After wonderful books on Bach, Handel, and the early Christian understanding of music, Calvin Stapert had added a volume on what he calls “music’s wittiest composer,” a composer full of surprises, Joseph Haydn ( Playing Before the Lord ). The book is organized biographically, and the account of his life…
As Joseph turns Egypt into a vast grain story, it’s said that he “stored grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he stopped measuring, for it was beyond measure” (Genesis 41:49). That “sand of the sea” reminds us of promises made to the patriarchs about the…
In the fourth century BC, the Greek historian Hecataeus of Abdera offered this account of ancient Egyptian history (quoted in Bernal, Black Athena , 1.109): “The natives of the land surmised that unless they removed the foreigners their troubles would never be resolved. At once, therefore, the aliens were driven…
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