Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
First, I love my Christmas songs. This is how I think of it: the season of Advent gets in the way of singing what I want to sing. How can you not listen to Nat King Cole in December? Or Bing Crosby, Harry Connick Jr., and Amy Grant? Even though…
Introduction Imagine the stereotypical American grandparents. Once you have the outline, start filling in the details. What picture emerges? Maybe something like what Ogden Nash said, “When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.” Or maybe the oft-repeated assertion that it’s the grandparent’s job description “to spoil the…
Hundreds of generations of ancient Israelites grew up as children of Abraham, inheritors of the covenant—the promises of God. These promises were more than nice bumper stickers or framed photos to cover empty space in their homes–these promises were at the heart of their very identity–individually and collectively. Genesis “I…
Aliens and Sojourners When the question “Is there life on other planets?” is asked, even the best theologians can only reply, “The Bible doesn’t tell us.” Well, in truth, the Bible does tell us, but only if we are paying attention. …and there was not a man to till the…
John runs a theme throughout his gospel that bubbles under the surface—Jesus is searching for, and finding, a wife. John launches into the narrative proper with a statement of where he’s going. “On the third day there was a wedding” (John 2.1) is about as good an example of flash…
I have come to believe that a great many people are almost too weak to repent in any very open way. There must first be some level of healing. In some cases, including biblical ones, there is not even any evidence of faith on the part of the recipients of…
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Why should there be a final judgment when God judges in time? Aquinas answers: “Judgment on something changeable cannot be rendered fully before its consummation. Thus judgment cannot be rendered fully regarding the quality of any action before its completion, both in itself and its results, because many actions appear…
1) Verse 4 moves from the affliction of the apostles (“our”) to the comfort of “those who are in any affliction.” This movement does not depend on any similarity or identity between the affliction of the apostles and the affliction of other sufferers (though cf. v. 6b). Members of the…
A few notes on Descartes, Meditations 1-2, with lots of help from Jean-Luc Marion. Descartes’s ego cogito, ergo sum is not, Marion points out, original, at least in its form. It has origins in Augustine, who offered this response to the skeptics: “I have no fear of the arguments of…
Some scattered thoughts inspired by comments from Chris Schlect and Doug Wilson at a faculty discussion of de Lubac today: How is it that theologians (like Norman Shepherd, Steve Wilkins, Rich Lusk, and others) who want to expunge the notion of merit from theology get accused of being “neo-nomians” and…
Milbank asks the intriguing question of whether de Lubac’s surnaturel thesis “rather deconstructs the terms of the Schleiermacher/Barth divide.” He appears to mean that the polarization of Schleiermacher’s “intrinicism” and Barth’s “extrinicisim” is dissolved by de Lubac’s Thomist understand of nature and grace. To adopt, for the moment, an idiom…
Milbank contrasts de Lubac’s advocacy of patristic and medieval hermeneutics, which insists that the allegorical fulfills and completes the literal, with the Yale school, which he sees as living in “the no-man’s land of ‘history-like narrative’ which at once abolishes real history and ignores the essential allegorical underpinning of Christian…
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