Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In The Meaning of History , Nikolai Berdyaev argues that the ancient Greeks had no concept of history and no philosophy of history because their concept of God and the world did not allow for it. “They conceived the world aesthetically, as a finite and harmonious cosmos. The most representative…
You know how the curtain parts at the beginning of a play, and you see a new scene, with characters and sets and incidents that had remained hidden up til then? Church last week was like that. Except the curtain was made up of all the things I thought were…
Genesis 3 records the terrible day when humanity fell into sin and shalom was violated. This was a moment of cosmic treason, when Adam and Eve violated their relationship with God by rebelling against His command and fell into the severe ignobility we all experience. The entrance of sin wrecked…
One of the most important contributions of twentieth-century Catholic nouvelle théologie , and of Henri de Lubac and Jean Danielou in particular, was its rehabilitation of the typological interpretation of the Bible practiced by patristic and medieval theologians. Typological interpretation assumes that events and institutions of the Old Testament present…
The Catholic News Service has reported that Pope Francis has called for the abolition of not only the death penalty, but also of life in prison. In a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law, the pontiff called for all “Christians and people of good will” to…
Each year, the United Nations designates November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon explains, “Violence against women and girls takes many forms and is widespread throughout the globe. It includes rape, domestic violence, harassment at work, abuse in school, female…
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With characteristic gleeful verve, Rodney Stark assaults secularization theory in his Triumph of Christianity . Secularization theory revived, he says, a charge brought against religious pluralism by “monopoly religions: that disputes among religious groups undermine the credibility of all” (357). But people kept being religious, even in pluralistic settings. Secularization…
Latin America was supposed to become Protestant by now. In one of the major non-developments of the past quarter-century, it didn’t. Catholics didn’t take predictions of a Protestant Latin America lightly, and responded with renewal efforts of their own. Rodney Stark ( Triumph of Christianity ) highlights the role of…
Carlotta Gall spent 12 years in Afghanistan, and spent much of her time investigating the sources of the Taliban resurgence. She traced it back to Pakistan, and discovered that the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) was secretly supportive of both the Taliban and al Quaeda. Gall writes , “The Pakistani government,…
Gall again, reporting on Pakistan’s cozy relationship with bin Laden: She found evidence of “regular correspondence between Bin Laden and a string of militant leaders who must have known he was living in Pakistan, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a pro-Kashmiri group that has also been active…
Jesus searches the entrails and hearts of His people (Revelation 2:23), but then judges everyone “according to your deeds” ( erga ). Why does He need the internal inspection when he’s going to judge by behavior in the last instance? That question highlights what might be called one dimension of…
Carol Wilson’s For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food is a well-researched and illuminating piece of social-scientific scholarship on the New Testament. Picking up on recent work that places Matthew’s gospel in a Greco-Roman imperial context (e.g., Warren Carter), Wilson focuses narrowly on access to food. How did…
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