Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Raising children in a world that is increasingly rebellious against God-given gender is quite a challenge. I believe that every generation has their own unique challenges to face, and LGBTQ is ours. It is the movement that steals our terminology (love, kindness, community) and our symbol of promise (the rainbow)…
While there are many tricky verses in the Bible, it’s clear that some of them were never intended to give us so much trouble. Paul’s mysterious mention of the “restrainer” in 2 Thessalonians 2 is a perfect example, but perhaps we have been looking at it the wrong way. Reading…
A common assumption of those most critical of “Christian nationalism” is that such a conception is inherently racist and opposed to the universal nature of the Christian faith. Many argue that Christian nationalism undermines a catholic sensibility by tethering Christianity to the particularities of the nation, and usually to a…
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks of those who “trouble” their congregations: “[T]here are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (1:7). 1 The word “trouble” caught my attention here, because in 1 Kings 18:17, King Ahab refers to Elijah the prophet as…
Many Christians find themselves working for businesses or corporations that encourage compliance with the moral revolution. Perhaps their company wants them to participate in gay pride month. Perhaps they require employees to use the preferred gender pronouns of their co-workers. Or maybe they require them to sign a statement affirming…
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.” – Matthew 11:18-19 When conservative…
Showing page 54 of 309
Showing page 2 of 43
Desmond offers an intriguing argument for a unified self, for an “idiotic” self in the original sense of idiotes , what is one’s own. There is an irreducible “mineness” to all our actions and experience, a mineness that cannot be reduced to categories or analyzed in terms of outside forces:…
Desmond takes another enthralling step. If “seeing is” may be “seeing is,” then metaphor might reveal being. “Metaphor may be a revelation of reality. Metapherein - the thing carries itself across to revelation, metaphorizes itself; this is its spread beyond univocal identity. In its self-metaphorizing, it reaches out to more,…
It might seem that saying things have determinate qualities undermines their dynamism, while emphasizing things dynamism of things fuzzies all the boundaries to the point where there are no things at all. Desmond, again, demurs. We cannot have a pure flux without any determinacy, because then “there would be no…
Modern thought is often materialist. Whatever happens to spirit in such an outlook, at least we’ve got things left. Right? Not so, argues William Desmond ( Being and the Between ) . The doctrine of primary and secondary qualities, he says, is a “classic bifurcation of thinghood into two extremes…
As I noted a few weeks ago, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen points out that everyone has multiple identities, and that these identities slip into the foreground and background in different settings. At a family reunion, our family identity is prominent. At a political rally, family identity recedes as we join…
In separating philosophy and theology, Spinoza mounts a kind of historicist critique of the Bible; its authors are bound by the assumptions of their time and culture. Besides that, the Bible and philosophy are completely different in method and style; the Bible is narrative, and its truth depends on the…
Showing page 1519 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
