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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Many have observed the connections between consumerism and abortion. It’s an ancient insight. The prophet Micah charged that Zion had been built with blood and Jerusalem with violent injustice (Micah 4:10). He immediately followed with a charge against Judah’s leaders: Judges accept bribes, priests teach for money; prophets please the…
It was much better for God to create humanity from one individual than from several, Augustine argues ( City of God , 12.21). Noting the difference between the creation of animals from the ground and the creation of Eve from Adam, Augustine notes, “as to the other animals, He created…
“What kind of an appeal does this have for a reader - especially one from a post-Christian society like our own-who does not share Herbert’s theological premisses?” asks Stephen Prickett in his TLS review of John Drury’s Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert . Coleridge already…
Augustine discerns an inner connection between imperium and pornography. Imperium is the political form of the libido dominandi . Pornography is the sexual form of the same libido . Both imperium and porn reduce human persons to bodies to be manipulated for the manipulator’s pleasure. Decadence is built into imperium…
In 1907, Ira M. Price, a member of the original faculty of the University of Chicago and professor of ancient languages and literatures from 1892-1925, concluded a discussion of the parallels between Genesis and other ANE documents with this observation ( The Monuments and the Old Testament ): “How .…
Jody Bottum’s new An Anxious Age is as idiosyncratic, quirky, eloquent, and insightful as its author. Bottum offers a spiritual reading of contemporary America, starting from the insight that American culture has been re-enchanted, our “metaphysical realm . . . repopulated with social and political ideas elevated to the status…
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