Although That Understanding Is Coming Back

“Ritual sex and human sacrifice are stolen moments of power over, and temporary relief from submission to. They are, we know by hindsight, a mimicry of divinity, but pagan man did not know that. He experienced it as power sharing, negotiating with the gods. To placate a god by burning his children on its altars …

The Touchstone of Protestant Poetics

“The reasons for singling out David the Psalmist as the primary model for Christian poets no doubt include the very great spiritual significance and artistic worth ascribed to the Psalms in contemporary commentary, as well as their use for centuries in Christian liturgy. But in addition, the Psalms were seen to raise with special force …

Just and General

“Generalizations are legitimate if they honestly describe an overall pattern. Generalizations are consequently not refuted through particular and individual counter examples. Honest Pharisees lived at the time of Christ, and they were not an embarrassment to Christ’s scathing denunciations of their religious sect as a whole. Indeed one indication of a Pharisee’s honesty would be …

Keeping Dragons Dragony

“The imagination fed on truth knows that the serpent is a symbol of hatred and deceit, of evil knowledge and power without conscience . . . I want [my children] to read plenty of stories in which there are dragons that act like dragons and meet a dragon’s end” (Michael D. O’Brian, A Landscape With …