Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
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I offer some thoughts on Ephraim Radner’s powerful A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church at the main First Things site .
In the closing chapter of Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem , Grotius provides a fascinating overview of sacrificial practices outside Israel. He moves from the classical world to India, the Americas, and the Canary Islands. He talks about animal and human sacrifice, and includes the…
Once upon a time, “the arts” did not exist. Of course, from the beginning people painted figures, shaped rock and wood into statues, played or sang melodies, added decorative flourishes to their homes. But for much of human history, these activities were not thought to be in a separate category…
Twice in the final chapters of Revelation, John falls before an angel and the angel tells him to get up: “I am a fellow servant of yours and your brothers who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God” (19:10; 22:8-9). It seems a simple reaffirmation of monotheism. Of course, no…
Another installment of Pastor Ralph Smith’s studies in Deuteronomy is available at the Trinity House site.
A few theologians leave me breathless, and Sam Wells is one of them. In his latest, Learning to Dream Again: Rediscovering the Heart of God , he discusses the aspects of wisdom that are his theme. One is humility, another joy, but stuck between them is suffering shame. This is…
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