Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
First John 5.16-17: If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life–to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for…
A few years back I read Lesslie Newbigin’s little book Truth and Authority in Modernity . 1 I was particularly impressed with his argument in chapter 2 “The Mediation of Divine Authority.” Now, maybe this is old hat to many of you, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it…
Baptism is not Christian circumcision. There’s a lot of loose talk to that effect in Presbyterian circles; but it’s not accurate. The old world rite of circumcision was fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Baptism unites us to Christ and therefore makes us participate in the circumcision of…
In recent years I’ve observed a number of Reformed-type churches trying to institute corporate handraising in certain sung parts of worship. This often does not seem to work very well. Some people don’t do it. Some do it half-way. Some do it with one hand. Some dramatically stretch to the…
Most modern scholars recognize that behind Arius’s campaign to differentiate Jesus from God was the Hellenistic theological conviction that the high God cannot suffer. Rowan Williams argues that Arius had the right idea about divine suffering, but the wrong idea of God, which “puts the unavoidable question of what the…
Charismatics have been much maligned for constantly “praising the Lord.” They would say if you hit your finger with a hammer, you should instantly say, “Thank you Jesus that You let me hit my finger…” This of course, as we all know, is stupid. There was once a lady who…
Showing page 217 of 309
Showing page 29 of 43
Laurence Michel, exploring the “Possibility of a Christian Tragedy,” suggests that the creation account of Genesis opens the possibility for a “tragic sense of life.” How? “To have a world imitative of the simple perfection of God one must have multiplicity and diversity of goods. Various evils and contraries will…
CS Lewis says in Pilgrim’s Regress : “Evil is fissiparous, and could never in a thousand eternities find any way to arrest its own reproduction. If it could, it could be no longer evil: for Form and Limit belong to the good.” But what then of a Good and Infinite…
In a chapter in Beyond Tragedy , Reinhold Niebuhr considers the relationship between Christianity and tragedy. He denies that Christianity is tragic: “The cross is not tragic but the resolution of tragedy.” In the course of his discussion he makes several intriguing points about the tragic outlook: 1) He highlights…
Simone Weil offered one of the most thorough-going Christian defenses of tragedy, though that defense comes at considerable cost to her orthodoxy. As Katherine Brueck points out in her study of Weil’s theory ( The Redemption of Tragedy ), Weil recognized that what was at stake in a discussion of…
Some more thoughts from Segal’s book: 1) He points out the optimism that gripped Athens in the Periclean period, an optimism about the ability of human LOGOS and NOMOS to stave off the savage potential of man’s PHUSIS. But that was short-lived: The Peloponnesian wars broke out, marked by several…
In his study of Sophocles, Tragedy and Civilization , Charles Segal points to several Greek terms that might be translated as “civilization” and that capture various aspects of civilized life: NOMOS = the established institutions, customs, and norms of a people POLITEIA = the form of government, especially the constitutional…
Showing page 2136 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
