Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mystical theologians are often unguarded, extreme, un-nuanced, pressing to the edges of heresy, sometimes beyond. Still, the mystics are worthy of study. Why? Many reasons. Unlike some late medieval and post-Reformation dogmaticians, mystical theologians are often instinctively and richly Trinitarian. Historical-critical approaches to Scripture left mystical theologians virtually untouched; mystics…
Portia of Belmont is a “lady richly left,” as Bassanio says of her in the first Act of The Merchant of Venice . Plus, she’s beautiful and wise. Suitors clamber to Belmont in hope. Her father knew it would be so, and in his will set up a fairy-tale test…
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In the nature of the case, “the” Christian meditation on Deuteronomy 14:1-21 cannot be written. Meditation offers too many possibilities, opens too many doors. There is not one and only one correct set of associations for a Christian to consider when thinking of Deuteronomy 14:1-21. We could, for example, consider…
Having retold the story of the cumulative sin of Israel leading to the great atonement on the cross, Paul then reemphasizes that, just as both Jew and Gentiles were locked into sin and judgment, now they are both justified by faith: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.…
Deuteronomy 14 is full of allusions to events of Israel’s history and other portions of Scripture. What would an Israelite learn by mediation on these allusions? The answer, I believe, is at least fourfold. Faith, Worship, War For the ancient Israelite first hearing Moses’ sermon, or perhaps hearing it read…
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Ruth 1:22: So Naomi returned and with her Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who returned from the land of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Ruth begins tragically. Elimelech flees from famine in Bethlehem by taking his wife and sons to Moab, where…
Ruth 1:21: Naomi said, I went out full, but Yahweh has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since Yahweh has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me? Ruth’s statement of faith is one of the most memorable and moving in Scripture. It is a…
Modern politics, we often think, is secular politics. Alexis de Tocqueville knew better. He observed that the French Revolution “took on the appearance of a religious revolution.” It was, he admitted, “a new kind of religion, an incomplete religion . . . without God, without ritual, and without life after…
In a lecture on incarnation and kenosis, Princeton’s Bruce McCormack asks John of Damascus how he can say that every act of the God-Man is “100% human and 100% divine.” Won’t the omnipotent divine act overwhelm the human act? That’s an odd question, I think. For, given divine concurrence, the…
Wise cautions from de Lubac on any effort to ease the tensions that have historically existed between church and civil order: “We can without difficulty concede the point that whichever side the absorption were effected from, everything would become infinitely simpler and much more practicable - in theory, at any…
De Lubac quotes Thomas a Kempis to the effect that “when the consummation comes, the sacraments will be employed no more,” and explains: “Human mediation, now indispensable and of primary importance, will have no raison d’etre in the Heavenly Jerusalem; there, everyone will hear God’s voice directly and everyone will…
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