Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Integrity seems to have two meanings. It can mean the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. A man of integrity is a person of honour, rectitude and probity, truthful and trustworthy. Integrity also describes a state – the quality of being whole and undivided. If things are…
Get the Psalm 32 Translation here Psalm 32 is the first part of Ps. 32-33, ending with a call to praise that is answered by what follows. Ultimately the psalm needs to be considered as a whole, but what we call Psalm 32 does have its own structure and logic,…
You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses would ya? No, of course not. I’d hit him with a bat. In our culture of frivolity it is tempting for Christians to think that solemnity should be our defining attribute. The coarseness of the world impedes us from enjoying any sort of…
Taking a cue in my last post from early Christian apologetics, I suggested that if we wish to articulate and defend a doctrine of creation ex nihilo in contemporary theology, we would do well to offer a thick description of Yahweh’s divine monarchia (his sole rule or sovereignty). Rather than…
I’m not sure we really understand the insidiousness of unbelief. It is not merely to reject the gospel of Jesus, the existence of a Creator God, or to question biblical morality. At its core, unbelief is ingratitude, and by the very nature of this ingratitude, it must ultimately reject every…
Mark’s narrative of the baptism of Jesus is characteristically brief: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him…
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Thomas thinks that grateful repayment of favors should match the sentiment of the giver rather than the deed or thing give. One of the objections is we can’t know what a benefactor is thinking: “We cannot base our actions on the unknown. God alone knows the heart of man. The…
Thomas relies heavily on Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca in his discussion of gratitude, but at one crucial point he introduces a distinctively Christian theme. Must we thank everyone who does us a beneficium ? Thomas answers with 1 Thessalonians 5:18: In all things give thanks. Ultimately, since God is cause…
One of the things often missed in critiques of scholasticism is its practical thrust. Questions angels and pinheads don’t capture the real genius of the best of scholasticism. In the hands of a master like Thomas, scholasticism is a mode of pastoral theology. A few illustrations from Thomas’s discussion of…
Robert Wilken closes a superb chapter on early Christian art in his recent The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity with a comment on the epochal significance of art in Christian history (pp. 53-4): “‘A cultural event of some importance was taking place,’ wrote the art historian Paul…
The editor of volume of the Summa on the virtues offers this superb and even lovely summary of the centrality of justice in Thomas’s conception of community. God is the source of all communal goods, since “each individual participates because physical, moral, spiritual, cultural values are derived from the causality…
Every time I read it, I’m impressed again with Edmund Bertram’s spirited description of the public role of pastors in Mansfield Park . He begins his speech in response to Mary Crawford’s dismissive “a clergyman is nothing.” Edmund replies: “A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. He must…
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