Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, and the Jews who witness it plot to kill him (Mark 3). Jesus’ response is not to initiate a protective counter-plot. He withdraws, but not permanently. His main response to murderous plots is to teach, heal, and continue His ministry of . . . . Continue Reading »
I’ve said it before, but in the light of the response to my Firstthings.com article on Protestantism, it bears repeating: The best Protestant response to Roman Catholicism is a raucously joyous Catholic Protestantism. That’s how Protestants can encourage deeper reform within the Roman . . . . Continue Reading »
With the thousand-page second volume ahead of me, it may be a bit premature to review NT Wright’s long-awaited Paul and the Faithfulness of God . If I wait until volume 2, though, I’ll likely forget what I wanted to say about volume 1. So here goes: Not a review but a report from a way . . . . Continue Reading »
Why is Dr. Who’s time-traveler ship, the Tardis, shaped like a British police box? Jill Lepore answers in a New Yorker piece marking the fiftieth anniversary of the TV show’s first episode. In fact, there were several answers. One was faux-scientific: “The outside appearance of . . . . Continue Reading »
The rise of geohistory did not, argues Martin JS Rudwick in his (literally) massive Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution , produce a conflict of “Science” and “Religion.” That paradigm for understanding eighteenth-century . . . . Continue Reading »
Wright ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God ) provides a superb summary of Paul’s teaching concerning baptism, starting with the essential point: “Baptism is a community-marking symbol, which the individual then receives, not first and foremost as a statement about him- or herself, but as . . . . Continue Reading »
In a recent online piece from the Atlantic , Tara Isabella Burton makes a case for theology as a university discipline, pointing out along the way the inherently interdisciplinary nature of theology: “As Oxford’s Dr. William Wood, a University Lecturer in Philosophical Theology and my . . . . Continue Reading »
In his classic study of The Paschal Liturgy and the Apocalypse , Massey Shepherd points to what he claims is a recurring pattern in Revelation’s heptamerous sequences: Apart from the seven letters at the beginning there is an “interlude” between “the sixth and seventh . . . . Continue Reading »
NT Wright observes ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God , 385 ), “It it still common to find ‘the church’ and related topics tucked away towards the back of studies of Paul, the assumption being that what mattered was sin and salvation and that questions about church life were . . . . Continue Reading »
Should Roman Catholics have a monopoly on the word “catholic” or on capitalization? I think not . . . . . Continue Reading »
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