Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“We have a God who hides things because He loves to be sought out, chewed out and found out.” As Christians, we are rightly taught that we must not question God’s Word. The problem is that the Scriptures record many things which appear to have been given to us for…
The book of Revelation is a liturgy. John begins “in the Spirit” on the “Lord’s day” (1:10). Jesus appears, and Jesus tells him to record messages to seven churches, words of encouragement and rebuke, like the call to worship and confession at the beginning of a Christian liturgy. In chapter…
In my previous posts, I looked at the theme of creation as it is found in a sequence of psalms devoted to Yahweh’s Kingship (Psalms 93-100). Among other matters, these psalms declare that when the Kingdom of Israel’s God comes, it is the Kingdom of the world’s own Creator .…
The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in…
The first chapters of the Word of God have a poetic rhythm. This is used to discredit their accuracy as historical narrative, but the truth is that these same rhythms continue far beyond the book of Genesis. In fact, the later texts shed light on the frustratingly succinct account of…
Mr. Martian: What’s that there? Mr. Edison: (Edison holds up a standard, 60 watt lightbulb). It’s a lightbulb. Mr. Martian: A “lightbulb” you say? What exactly is a “lightbulb”? Mr. Edison: A lightbulb is an object used to illuminate a dark area, say a room. It’s made primarily of filament…
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George Steiner ( Martin Heidegger , 155-6) approaches the essence of Heidegger: ” Sein ist Sein and the rejection of paraphrase or logical exposition have their exact precedent in the ontological finality of theology . . . they are the absolute equivalent to the Self-utterance and Self-definition of the Deity…
Heidegger’s play with veiling and unveiling, of truth as a-letheia can seem pointless, but John Caputo offers this helpful description in Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) (273-4): “What better example of the play of concealment and un-concealment, of closure and dis-closure,…
Yahweh has no sooner promised the land to Abram than we learn that there is a famine in the land (Genesis 12:10). Isaac has to face another famine later, another famine “besides the first famine in the days of Abraham” (Genesis 26:1). And of course Jacob sends his sons to…
The sixth cause of absurdity in reason, Hobbes says ( Leviathan Publisher: Penguin Classics , 1.5) is “the use of Metaphors, Tropes, and other Rhetoricall figures, in stead of words proper.” Metaphors are lawful in common speech, but “in reckoning [i.e., in reasoning mathematically conceived], and seeking of truth, such…
Hobbes ( Leviathan Publisher: Penguin Classics , 1.4) argues that speech enables us generalize and so to avoid the labor that would come if we had to analyze and assess every new object of knowledge individually: “a man that hath no use of Speech at all, (such, as is born…
Isaiah uses the root yasha’ (save) nearly thirty times in his prophecy. After chapter 43, the participle form is used seven times as a substantive, a title for Yahweh, in statements like: “I am Yahweh your God, your Savior” (43:3, 11; 45:15, 21; 49:26; 60:16; 63:8). Along with the simple…
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