Analytic Theology

It comprises three of the most bewildering phrases of the New Testament, if not the entire Bible – and, some of the most beguiling. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “Beginning” means “start” or “onset,” as in the commencement of a process, or an [...]

It would not be an overstatement to say that Martin Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art” is one of the 20th Century’s most influential texts on aesthetics. In it, he expounds an inspiring theory about the relationship between art and culture. A “work of art,” according to Heidegger, isn’t any ordinary painting, statue, [...]

The theological climate of Virgil’s time was bleak. The official Roman religion was the tepid, uninspired worship of Augustus as a “living God.” In fact, Augustus commissioned Virgil to write the Aeneid as a kind of commemorative poem, in his honor. As a stoic, Virgil disdained the human body, and this concept is reflected throughout [...]

A recent article in The Economist profiled a peculiar institution called The Creation Museum, located in the up-to-date metropolis of Petersburg, Kentucky. “Keeping the Word,” The Economist 32 (Jun. 2, 2007). Built at a cost of $27 million, the museum is premised on the concept that man and dinosaurs evolved together. The Museum answers a [...]

The most significant event in the development of Western Civilization is 573 CE.  That’s the birth date of the Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam.  Over the next several centuries, Islam overran the Christian world, sweeping out of Arabia into Southern Europe.  Jerusalem fell.  So did Alexandria, home to many early Church figures, and all of [...]

And I literally mean “power.” An article in today’s Wall Street Journal reminded me of how Noriega was driven out of Panama when American troops played rock music after he holed up in the Vatican embassy, Córdoba, J., “Booming Panama City Await’s Noriega’s Return,” Wall St. Journal (Feb. 17, 2007). Songs played included Jimi Hendrix’s [...]

There is no direct evidence they did, and by asking this question, I do not mean to impugn their righteousness or integrity.  However, as an anthropological fact, human sacrifice was an integral component of precursor Canaanite religions, Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions 441 (1997).  The Old Testament is scattered with allusive [...]

At 1 Corinthians 12:14, Paul writes: “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should [...]

At Genesis 2:19, God grants Adam the prerogative to name the animals, all of which God (only recently) had made. “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever [...]

A curious term indeed, it refers to the three days Jesus spent in Hell after he was crucified, before he went to Heaven. But what was he doing there, and why would he want to visit such a place? For me, at least, this always has seemed to be a kind of bolt-on appendage to [...]