Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When a certain Samaritan village refused Jesus’ attempt to visit, James and John asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven upon it. The allusion to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is evident, but, as the story shows, James’ and John’s thinking was entirely warped. Jesus rebuked…
In the first part of this essay, I considered paideia (formation)and mimesis (imitation) in the context of Aristotle’s virtue ethics and that of the New Testament. The overall concern is to realize how relevant is Aristotle’s ethics both to diagnosing our current malaise and to enculturing our children, though we…
In these posts I am inviting you into my philosophical reflection about integration , the absence of which we feel palpably in our fragmented world. My hope is for us to understand it more deeply, and to be ourselves reintegrated in the process. At this point in this extended inquiry…
It’s hard to imagine someone, centuries from now, mistaking our culture for a moral highpoint in the history of the West. Increasingly the news is dominated by school shootings, abusive policing, sexploitation of women, and increasing rates of suicide, addiction, and divorce. In response, the Left calls for regulations, surveillance,…
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” (Ps. 34:17-18) God is listening. He is listening when we ask Him for financial provision,…
The allusions to Mt. Sinai in the transfiguration story point to Jesus as a new Moses and even more as Yahweh, the God who met Moses and Elijah on the mountain. The fact that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah spoke of Jesus’ “exodus” suggests that the mountain of transfiguration was intended…
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Milbank ( Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People ) points out that the Enlightenment was not simple one thing: “it can bedivided into (a) a Christian and sometimes post -Christian Ciceronian Stoicreaction against the voluntarism of ‘modern Christian’ thought;(b) a perpetuation of Reformation…
Milbank’s Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People presupposes that there is a homology between metaphysics and politics. He identifies four assumptions of modern philosophy: “(1) the univocity rather than analogy of being; ( 2) knowledgeby representation rather than identity; ( 3 ) the…
Richard Beck ( The Slavery of Death ) quotes some impressive passages from Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death . They’reworthy of re-quoting. “This is what society is and always has been: asymbolic action system, a structure of statuses and roles, customsand rules for behavior, designed to serve as a…
Observing that Christians today “sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented,” Walter Bruggemann suggests that the church is in a state of denial: “The church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and must more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want…
I review Richard Beck’s stimulating The Slavery of Death at the Trinity House site.
Jeremiah’s message to Judah is that the Lord has given the earth into hands of his “servant,” Nebuchadnezzar: “I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and I have given him also the wild animals of the field to serve him” (27:6).…
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