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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Parenting

Guarding Our Eyes

It is a well-known movie trope, the sports car drives up, a stiletto-heeled starlet steps out and the camera follows her leg up the prodigious slit of her dress, then it takes in the rest of her figure before settling on her face, usually primed and puckered for some pro-feminist…

by Remy WilkinsSeptember 15, 2015
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Books

Are the Divine Persons Persons?

The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering again and again the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 10, 2015
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Culture

Face To Facebook

I sit here in my office and poke around on a keyboard that is not even physically connected to my laptop and characters appear on a screen. I have a phone in my pocket through which I talk to someone around the world, send a text message, and to which…

by Bill SmithSeptember 8, 2015
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Prayer

Repent of Your Piety

I want to give a pep talk. Nothing fancy, nothing clever. Jesus makes some astounding promises in Luke 11. I want to clear out the clutter and convince you to believe Him and to act on it. The chapter begins with Jesus praying and teaching His disciples to pray by…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 7, 2015
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John

The Strange Love of Jesus

Eleonore Stump in her book Wandering in Darkness invites us to re-read the story of Lazarus (John 11) from Mary’s perspective. Stump argues that the story of Lazarus is a story of Mary, since both Lazarus and Martha are identified by their relationship with Mary. The true ending of the…

by Bogumil JarmulakSeptember 3, 2015
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Movies

Movies and Music with James Jordan

In his introduction to The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan , Peter Leithart says this about him: “Jordan is an unclassifiable thinker because he is an unclassifiable person . . . he closes his eyes in ecstasy listening to Messiaen or Rachmaninoff . .…

by Brian MoatsSeptember 2, 2015

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History

Barnum’s opera

Levine: “In 1853 Putnam’s Magazine had proposed that P. T. Barnum . . . be named the manager of New York’s Opera. ‘He understands what our public wants, and how to gratify that want. He has no foreign antecedents. He is not bullied by the remembrance that they manage so…

October 17, 2006
History

Barnum’s opera

Levine: “In 1853 Putnam’s Magazine had proposed that P. T. Barnum . . . be named the manager of New York’s Opera. ‘He understands what our public wants, and how to gratify that want. He has no foreign antecedents. He is not bullied by the remembrance that they manage so…

October 17, 2006
History

Popular opera

In his Highbrow/Lowbrow , Lawrence Levine writes that “it is hard to exaggerate the ubiquity of operatic music in nineteenth-century America. In 1861 a band played music from Rigoletto to accompany the inauguration of President Lincoln. In the midst of the Civil War a soldier in the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer…

October 17, 2006

Musical and Poetic Rhythms

Victor Zuckerkandl points out that Western music since the 17th century has been measured music, that is, music in which beats are organized into groups, into measures. This innovation in musical organization creates a complex rhythmic situation. At one level, there is a recognizable beat running through a piece of…

October 17, 2006
Theology

Art and Necessity

Some quite random highlights from Milbank’s very rich essay review of Rowan Williams’s Art and Necessity , published in Modern Theology . 1) Milbank makes a numerb of illuminating points about Aquinas’s theory of knowledge, supporting some aspects of Maritain’s Thomism. Instead of addressing the strictly “epistemological” question of how…

October 16, 2006

Sermon outline

This overlaps considerably with previous posts. INTRODUCTION According to John’s description, the world is formed by various “lusts” or desires, and by “pride” and “boasting.” We can respond faithfully to the world only when we discern the desires that shape the world and the desires and boasting provoked by the…

October 16, 2006

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