Proto-Homers

Gordon summarizes epics that previewed the Homeric epics in quite direct ways. The “Ugaritic Legend of Kret is of Cretan derivation as the name of the hero indicates. Like the Iliad, the story concerns a war waged so that a king might regain his rightful wife who is being withheld from him, . . . . Continue Reading »

Epic, Nation, Cosmos

In his dense 1967 monograph on Homer and the Bible , Cyrus Gordon argued that the Iliad was written not for the sake of art only but to inspire the imagination of a Greek nation: “it does not divide Greek from Greek. The Trojans and their allies are treated with as much decorum and honor as . . . . Continue Reading »

Pity the Radical

Pity the radical. For every radical, there’s always someone more radical still, someone who plays “more radical than thou” with greater skill. Recent New Testament scholarship has highlighted the “counter-imperial” import of the gospel. In some ways, this is a healthy . . . . Continue Reading »

Womb of the World

The church is the incubator of the new creation. It is the womb of a new world, where the new creation gestates. But it can also be an incubator of monsters and witches. That’s the message of the letters to the churches. As Austin Farrer and others point out, the letters anticipate later . . . . Continue Reading »

Hot and Cold

James Jordan notes the connection between Jesus’ warning to the church at Laodicea and Yahweh’s promise to Noah after the flood. Jesus warns the church that is “neither hot nor cold” that they will be spewed from His mouth (Revelation 3:15-16). In Genesis 8, Yahweh promises . . . . Continue Reading »

Hegel’s Trinitarian Logic

In his Hegels Trinitarian Claim: A Critical Reflection , Dale Schlitt lays out Hegel’s effort to derive Trinitarian theology conceptually, rather than from revelation and redemptive history. In part, this is an argument about the structure of logic. For Hegel, the traiadic structure of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Wedding homily

Ephesians 5:18-21: Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to . . . . Continue Reading »

Eucharistic meditation

Exodus 20:4: You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. Many read the Second Commandment as a prohibition of . . . . Continue Reading »