Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…
Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…
What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…
Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…
The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…
I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…
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Ruskin's concept of "typical beauty" is a piece of theological aesthetics. In the second volume of Modern Painters , Ruskin distinguished kinds of beauty, the typical and the vital. Of the first, he says: "that external quality of bodies already so often spoken of, and which, whether it occur in…
In the third volume of Modern Painters , Ruskin addresses the "German dulness, and English affectation" that has "multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable words that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians,—namely, 'Objective,' and 'Subjective.'" The words are "exquisitely . . . useless"…
George Landow argues ( Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows ) that the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins would look less bizarre, though no less innovative, if we placed Hopkins more firmly in the poetics of his time. Which is to say, placed him in the context of a typological poetics. Hopkins's…
Architecture, Ruskin claims ( Seven Lamps of Architecture ), isn’t the same as building. Architecture refers to the specifically artistic features of a building, and the specifically artistic features have to do with adornment and not function: “Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above…
John Ruskin was the main art critic of his time; he was an artists himself, and also wrote on a variety of other topics, especially on the state of English politics and economy. He abandoned explicit attachment to Evangelical Christianity but remained deeply indebted. He provides an excellent example of…
Typological forms of thought weren't confined to sermons and commentaries, but made their way into 19 th -century English poetry. -Some poets put typology to orthodox uses, though here we can see divergent deployments of a similar typology. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a poem, Casa Guidi Windows (1851) about the…
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