Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
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The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
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Matthew Levering has a couple of brilliant pages on Aquinas’s discussion of how Christ’s sacrificial obedience to the Father restores justice in the world ( Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple ). First, Thomas emphasizes the uniqueness of Israel’s law, which don’t simply aim, as human law order does, at…
How does de Lubac’s interest in nature/grace fit into his ecclesiological concerns? It might seem that his effort to integrate nature and grace could support the juridical notion of the church expressed in Vatican I. Operating on a strict nature/supernatural distinction, one might see the church as an “invisible” body…
James Carroll’s account of Constantine ( Constantine’s Sword ) is riddled with half-truths and distortions. He’s not nearly as bad as Dan Brown, but he’s bad. But the howler (thus far) is this: Christians had tried to work out how Jesus is God without coming to a consensus, but what…
Obama may be just as dangerous as some of my friends say he is. He certainly will do all he can to re-secure abortion rights, advance gay rights, enact counter-productive legislation on health care. His goals are all the more worrisome given the executive powers he inherits from the Bush…
Betz sharply, and rightly, dismisses Berlin’s suggestion that Hamann’s “irrationalism” is the deep source of National Socialism: “let is be stated at the outset that Hamann was a friend of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn; that he denounces the persecution of the Jews; that he called Judaism the ‘bodily mother…
Why does Hamann write so “darkly”? Betz suggests that in part “it should be seen as a calculated attempt to show up the Aufklarer , i.e., to show that they are not as bright as they think, indeed, to force upon them a confession of ignorance, in order that they…
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