Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev & the Capitalist West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Reviewed by Peter J. Leithart. The subtitle of this massive volume gives a good idea of its major theme. Martin, the…
The Abomination of Desolation: PART 1 The Abomination of Desolation: PART 2 What I intend to do in this series of studies is this: First, in the present essay we shall survey the occurrences of the Abomination of Desolation in the Bible in a cursory way, in order to get…
We previously surveyed what is meant by the abomination of desolation . We suggested that it refers to sacrilegious acts performed by the religious leaders of Israel, captained by their High Priest, right in front of God’s face in the Temple. Later studies in this series will provide evidence for…
Throughout history, the Christian Church has had to guard against the heresy of gnosticism. Gnosticism is not an ordinary heresy, because it does not manifest itself as a set of defined beliefs. Rather, gnosticism is a tendency, a tendency to replace the historic facts of Christianity with philosophical ideas. Gnosticism…
In Rite Reasons Nos. 9-12, I discussed the errors of Roman Catholicism, Anglo-Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. I have had several requests to comment further on the so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea in A.D. 787. That Council ordered the excommunication of anyone who rejects the veneration of icons. 1…
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
Showing page 296 of 309
Showing page 3 of 43
Someone asked me recently about my views on church and state. I replied that I advocate a "Christendom model" of church-state relations. Then I proceeded to qualify. When I was done qualifying, I suddenly wondered whether what I call "Christendom" corresponds to what other people understand by the word. It…
Ezra begins where 2 Chronicles ends, with the decree of Cyrus. Some scholars have argued that the repetition indicates that the books were once united. It's said that the doubling is an ancient literary device to knot together two sections of a text. Whether that is the case or not,…
James Simpson briefly reviews the career of the 17th-century iconoclast William Dowsing in his history of iconoclasm, Under the Hammer . What motivated Dowsing, he argues, wasn't an effort to prioritize the word over the image, but a quest for "jurisdictional clarity." With the triumph of Parliament, the complex jurisdictional…
The key question regarding Freud, says Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 266), is "Whom did Freud obey when he began to develop his theory?" The question arises because "in Freud's relational system there is no place for Sigmund Freud's own experience." He shares this distinction of an…
Alexandra Schwartz's New Yorker essay on self-improvement movements ( "Improving Ourselves to Death" ) starts out breezily enough, but it turns grim pretty fast. The "death" in her title isn't metaphorical. She summarizes the experiment of Carl Cederström and André Spicer, who tried to improve one area of their lives…
In a TLS review of Kontantin Barsht's Drawings and Calligraphy of Fyodor Dostoevsky , Robert Bird reminds us that Dostoevsky was a "trained draughtsman" who "thought in images no less than in words: "He wrote frequently about painting, and many of his key terms suggest visual, rather than verbal communication,…
Showing page 100 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
