Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The god of Israel was not just any god. Two thousand years of Christian history, with it’s besetting philosophical temptations, and full-blown deist and transcendentalist and universalist problems, have obscured the fact that, in itself, the identity of the true god (or gods) cannot be predetermined, any more than the…
Jacob and Solomon God gave wealth and possessions to Jacob, and then threatened to take them all away at Peniel. Jacob wrestled with God, and through prayer Jacob saw through the crisis by faith and was made victor (Hosea 12:4). The Kingdom period in Israel concerns the same themes. We…
In our study of the historical impact and unfolding of the Ten Words of God, we now arrive at the Third Word. The Third Word prohibits hypocrisy, and when we realize this, we can see right away that disobeying the Third Word is closely tied to the situation of Israel…
Abraham and Joshua In our previous two essays, we considered aspects of the lives of Abraham and Jacob, as these display how God works with men in history. These two men carry in themselves all the future of Israel, so to speak, and their lives at the individual level correspond…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World (continued) Physical Training Though it is seldom recognized any more, the fact is that no liberal arts and no science is possible apart from peace, and peace is only possible if there is a strong military presence that protects a nation.…
Last month, in our essay " Patriarchal Dominion ," we observed the flow from Abraham to Jacob to Joseph. Our concern here is to advance our understanding of that narrative flow. I should mention that I am assuming much that is found in my book Primeval Saints: Studies in the…
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Balances were essential to commerce in ancient Israel, weighing not only commodities to be bought and sold but in some cases weighing the gold and silver that served as the medium of exchange. A merchant could cheat customers by adjusting the scales to his advantage. According to Proverbs 11:1, such…
“Do not move an ancient landmark,” Solomon says in Proverbs 23:10. Just what a king would say: Kings want to keep things just as they are, and convince everyone that they have always been so, so long as they can sit on top of the heap. But the sequel of…
Michael Bruno’s Political Augustinianism is a thorough examination of recent interpretations of Augustine’s political thought, starting with French scholars like H.I. Marrou and H. X. Arquillière, whose 1933 L’Augustinianisme Politique set the terms for much subsequent discussion, through the realist uses of Augustine in Niebuhr and the “secularist” interpretation of…
George Friedman has written that the promise of the European union was not merely prosperity and peace, but joy: “the joy of joining men into a single brotherhood, overcoming the divisions of mere custom.” But here’s the rub: Europeans have to be willing to share the same fate if they…
The TLS reviewer of Peter Unger’s Empty Ideas is not much impressed with Unger’s critique of analytic philosophy. According to Unger, “Contemporary analytic metaphysicians see themselves as theorizing boldly and systematically about the deepest and most general nature of reality. In Peter Unger’s view, they are deluded: far from resuming…
Philip Caldwell’s Liturgy As Revelation is a successful book on several levels. Caldwell fills out recent accounts of twentieth-century Catholicism by attending to some lesser-known figures associated in various ways with the nouvelle theologie : Rene Latourelle, Salvatore Marsili, Gustave Martelet, and, a later figure, Avery Dulles. Caldwell’s analyses of…
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