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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Baylor University Press is hosting a reception to celebrate the release of my Gratitude: An Intellectual History . It will take place at the First Things offices in Manhattan on Thursday, March 6, at 6 PM. For details, click here .
Jesus addresses seven letters to seven “angels” of the churches (Revelation 2-3). Commentators differ on whether the angels are spiritual beings, ecclesial guardian angels, or human beings, “messengers.” The letter to Ephesus seems decisive. There, Jesus charges that the angel has left his first love (Revelation 2:4), “fallen” from his…
The seven stars in Jesus’ hand are the angels of the churches, the seven lampstands are the churches (Revelation 1:20). In the temple imagery that John is drawing on, the lamps on the lampstand are the lamps themselves, the lights that make the lampstand luminous. The lampstand of the temple…
The distinction between appearance and reality is an old saw in philosophy. It appears in the letters to the churches (Revelation 2-3) as an opposition between being and saying, a (distinctively Hebraic?) emphasis on the word. Several letters describe the challenge. At Ephesus, there are “saying apostles” who are not…
In his study of the sacramental shape of Eberhard Jungel’s theology, The Interruptive Word , R. David Nelson suggests that “in many types of ecclesiology, Jesus Christ and the church . . . are conceived as identical” (167). He offers several examples, mostly Catholic: “ Lumen gentium . . .…
Andrew Wilson thinks that the Ukrainian protesters have won . But the battle for a free Ukraine is just beginning. Russian won’t make it easy. “the new government in Ukraine, however it’s made up, will be given the briefest of ritualistic honeymoons before Russia uses every instrument at its disposal…
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