Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I just finished re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday . I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one…
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be…
I was inspired to write this article after reading John Ahern’s The Case for Shorter Hymnals first published on Theopolis Institute’s website on November 16, 2021. Mr. Ahern and I are writing with different audiences and emphases in mind. I am thankful we both share a mutual desire to see…
If you’ve spent any time in the social-media galaxy of Christian cultural commentators, you have almost definitely run across the Latin phrase Imago Dei . It means image of God . Why they usually say it in Latin, I couldn’t tell you. We saw it in the wake of the…
The Gospel of Matthew—indeed, the New Testament—begins with a list of names, and that list of names is introduced by this heading: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Why start like this? Why “the son of David” and “the son…
A blade is raised. A child wails. But the brow under the crown is untroubled. Solomon knows that the raising of the sword will reveal the true parent and the identity of the son. But how did he know this? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac certainly bears some of the…
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Solomon built the temple on the threshing floor that David bought from Araunah the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24; 2 Chronicles 3). What might that mean? Grain is threshed when an animal walks over it, sometimes dragging a threshing sledge, to separate the grain from the chaff. Threshed grain is winnowed,…
These are remarks delivered to introduce conductor John Mason Hodges as the first Birmingham Life and Culture speaker. This is the first of what we hope will be an annual lecture on the arts and culture. Each year, we’ll bring a painter, musician, poet, sculptor, novelist, critic, architect, or scholar…
Jesus’ action in the temple was a symbolic enactment of the coming destruction of the temple. The Jewish leaders had turned what should have been a house of prayer for the Gentiles into a den of brigands. Jesus overturned the tables and chairs to dramatize what lay on the horizon…
AC Bradley ( Shakespearean Tragedy ) points out that Othello has an unusual structure for a Shakespeare tragedy. The main conflict doesn't arise until the third act, and then the pressure and movement is relentless from that point to the end. In the other tragedies, the crisis emerges earlier, Act…
The quadriga - the fourfold sense, consisting of literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical - isn't only a “method” for interpreting Scripture but a framework for interpreting everything . Two assumptions guide my reflections here. First, medieval biblical scholars insisted that biblical allegory and typology was not merely a method of…
Theories of language, Rosenstock-Huessy comments, focus almost exclusive attention on the speaker or writer, and almost none on the listener: “Our philology is built around the process of talking, speaking, writing.” Listening is emphasized in “military training for obedience, understanding to psychology, listening and learning to acoustics and education.” But…
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