Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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Further along his his treatment of de Lubac, Milbank discusses the change in the meaning of causality and divine causality in the medieval period. Drawing on the work of Jacob Schmutz, he gives this account: Prior to 1250, influentia was understood in its etymological sense as a “flowing-in” from God…
INTRODUCTION The French Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) was one of the most significant Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, a central figure in the ressourcement movement and the nouvelle theologie movement that inspired the change of atmosphere in the Catholic church leading up to Vatican II. In his…
Much of the following was inspired by a lecture by Dr. David Powlison of the counseling center at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia. INTRODUCTION As disciples of Jesus, we are all called to take our cross to suffer with Him. He suffered because He provoked murderous hatred from his enemies. Our afflictions…
At the end of his intriguing discussion of Gericault’s painting Scene of Shipwreck, Julian Barnes gives a brief summary of the fortunes of Noah in Western art, which he says change significantly after the Sistine Chapel: “In the Sistine Chapel the Ark (now looking more like a floating bandstand than…
JL Austin once suggested that many people think of existing as something over and above the various activities of a thing, something things do all the time: “like breathing, only quieter - ticking over, as it were, in a metaphysical sort of way.”
Exploring George Hunsinger’s criticisms of Thomas’ views on grace, Kerr argues that Thomas does not, as Hunsinger suggests, make human nature “conceptually prior to and independent of divine grace.” Rather “it is by grace that the soul of the sinner is open to God. Paradoxically, fallen human beings are open…
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