“These new models tend to be adopted without the demands for rigorous evidence required by traditional scholarship. If Euro-centrism is a fault, one would think Afro-centrism would be similarly narrow-minded. If patriarchy is wrong, why would matriarchy be any better? But these quibbles miss the point of postmodern scholarship. Truth is not the issue. The …
A Theology of the Table of Contents
“The problem with contemporary Protestants is that they have no real doctrine of the Table of Contents. With the approach that is popular in conservative evangelical circles, one simply comes to the Bible by means of an epistemological lurch. The Bible ‘just is,’ and any questions about how it got here are dismissed as a …
Barbaric Lyricism
“Those who create the sacred with their own violence are incapable of seeing its truth. This is what makes the friends totally deaf to the appeals Job is constantly making. The more they participate in violence against the unfortunate man, the more they are carried away by their own barbaric lyricism and the less they …
Child Sacrifice
In the latter half of this twelfth chapter, we have some reiteration of earlier themes, as well as additional exhortation and instruction. “Notwithstanding thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after . . .” (Deuteronomy 12:15-32). The establishment of Yahweh worship did not mean that all animals had …
Everyone Loves a Parade
We know that formal liturgy is required by God, and that Paul told the Colossians that he rejoiced to hear of their good order. We also know that He has fashioned the creation in such a way that liturgy of some sort is inescapable. Every congregation of Christians in the history of the world has …
A Weekly Deadline
When we gather together, we must remember the wisdom and grace of God. In an assembly like this, there must be countless offenses, grievances, hurts, misunderstandings, and more. These are knots that should not be untied; the more we try to untie them, the worse we make it. God’s way is far simpler. Love dissolves …
Puritan Poetry: Crammed With Images
“The fear of graven images was an obsession with the Puritans. Like most of their obsesssions, however, it resulted, not in the childish dogmatism imputed to them by nineteenth-century commentators, but in a consistent system of clear, taut, definitions and distinctions . . . A verbal idol, such as might be found in poetry, would …
Choosing Your Own Designer History, One That Works for You
“Since there is no objective truth, history may be rewritten according to the needs of a particular group. If history is nothing more than ‘a network of agonistic [i.e., fighting, contending] language games,’ then any alternative ‘language game’ that advances a particular agenda, that meets ‘success’ in countering institutional power, can pass as legitimate history. …
No More Inspired Than the Maps and Concordance, But Still Authoritative
“But when we open our Bibles, before we come to the Word of God at Genesis 1:1, we come to the word of the Church at the Table of Contents. No one holds that the Table of Contents is part of inspired Scripture; rather it points to inspired Scripture, in a similar way that John …
Sacralizing the Violence
“Under our very eyes, the three friends sacralize the violence. The insults and meanness are metamorphosed into the grandiose accomplishments of a supernatural mission . . . Whenever opinion turns against a leader formerly elevated by the people’s favor, the community automatically attributes the change to the intervention of an absolute Justice” (Girard, Job, p. …