Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In my previous two posts, I looked at aspects of Psalms 93, 95, 96 and 98 that declare Yahweh, the divine King, to be the world’s own Creator. In my next post, I plan to argue that the creation theology of the sub-section constituted by Psalms 93-100 contributes to the…
Ethika Politika has published a fascinating interview within which the French Catholic philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj discusses his recent work on the subject of sexuality. While there are many points where our lines of reasoning as Protestants will sharply diverge from Hadjadj’s, there is also much that is deeply perceptive in…
For anyone in Shakespeare’s audience who knew the real story of Macbeth, his play must have been surprising. Shakespeare changed so many important details of the historical Macbeth’s life that had Raphael Holinshed, the main author of the most popular history of the British Isles in Shakespeare’s day — Holinshed…
I started looking at a sequence of psalms on divine Kingship (Psalms 93-100) in my last post, part of a series looking at the Old Testament’s witness to Yahweh’s exercise of absolute mastery over his cosmos. I am not trying to “prove” a doctrine of creation ex nihilo directly from…
Most of the time I believe that dread is wise, anxiety righteous, fear a holy thing. It sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. There are days when fear seems to be not only a rational response to my circumstances, but a moral duty. After all, being a grown-up means responsibility.…
Get the Psalm 36 Translation here Psalm 36 begins with several translation problems. First, the first word in the actual psalm, as it is found in the English text, is the word "oracle." This word also begins the second verse in the medieval Massoretic Hebrew text, which is our basic…
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Richard Fenn ( Liturgies and Trials ) notes that serious, absolutely binding speech - promises, for instance - is comparatively rare in normal conversation. When we do make binding promises, we give ad receive “signs and symbols that something out of the ordinary is occurring” - an oath, an exchange…
The key thing about Obama’s skin is not its color, but its thickness. I have rarely seen such a thin-skinned, touchy politician. When Clinton said that Obama has the “political instincts of a Chicago thug,” that’s what he was talking about - he takes offense quickly and has a long…
James Rogers of Texas A&M writes with some notes on the charity of the law, which I reflected on earlier this week with a post on Matthew Levering’s book on Aquinas: “For this age, I suspect that we have most difficulty thinking of the Mosaic laws on sex as having…
Carroll’s chief argument is that the cross takes on a centrality after Constantine that it never had in earlier Christianity, which focused instead on the incarnation and resurrection. The cross was comparatively rare in the earliest Christian iconography, but the notion that Christianity, and Christian salvation, is focused on the…
Oh, my. I said earlier that Carroll is better than Dan Brown. I’m revising that estimate. He describes the Council of Nicea in a paragraph, implying that it was all Constantine’s doing. The bishops came up with a creed “in response to the emperor’s mandate.” He notes that it was…
Yesterday I recorded James Carroll’s claim that Constantine introduced the notion of a “unified” church into Christianity, but if I had read the next sentence I would have found a topper. Carroll says that Paul composed a “hymn to diversity” in “Corinth in Greece,” citing 1 Corinthians 12 in an…
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