Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When Jesus says in the farewell discourse that his disciples know the way to where He is going, Thomas replies: “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus answers Thomas, but He gives Thomas more than he asked : “I am the way,…
Through the pandemic we learned a lot about infections, how to catch them, what’s contagious, how to protect yourself from getting the infection. I learned a lot of new terms, like “social distancing,” “ppe” (personal protective equipment), N95 masks, and so on. We’ve seen that people are willing to go…
In Genesis 9:20, Noah is called “a man of the soil”. This phrase is a bit of a shock in the Hebrew; though it’s made up of two very common words - 'ish is “man” and 'adamah is “soil” or “ground” - these two words are never used together before…
Harold Bloom’s discussion of Twelfth Night in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is, as would be expected, insightful. It displays his deep love of poetry, and includes some truly eloquent descriptions of Orsino: “that sublimely outrageous lover of love” and “amiable erotic lunacy.” Bloom is worth reading just…
There have been times when Evangelicals, in an attempt to be clear about the errors of Rome and Constantinople concerning Mary, have been so denigrating of the mother of our Lord that they sounded more like cut and pasted lines from the Babylonian Talmud than they did disciples of Mary’s…
Awe is the phenomena experienced when one looks up and lights upon the height, majesty, and mystery of the California Redwoods. It appears the trees pierce heaven itself. Among these giant organisms are the Sequoia–while they are shorter in form, they reserve a width that spans an automobile. These trees…
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Barth’s theology of justification has many virtues. Let me highlight only a couple of them. For starters, Barth’s is an utterly, manically theocentric account of justification. This comes through in large ways and small. One of the most striking indications of this is the way he deals with the question…
Vladimir Jankelevitch ( Le Pur et l’Impur , 11) observes that we apply the concept of purity to wine and milk, defining the purity of beverages in opposition to admixture of other ingredients. In each case “purity” prohibits mixture, especially mixture of a thing with its supposed opposite. Pure poetry…
Barth in fully Barthian regalia ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 186-7): “As God was in Christ, far from being against Himself, or at disunity with Himself, He has put into effect the freedom of His divine love, the love in which He is divinely free. He has therefore done and…
Barth famously answers Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? by talking about the “Judge judged in our place” ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 ). In a passage summarizing the gospel account of Jesus’s life, he gives this remarkable summary of the “exchange of roles” that occurs in the gospel: “Those who are to…
A great Cur Deus Homo moment from Barth ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 553): “What we men must suffer - if it is to be suffered in accordance with the righteousness of God - can be suffered for us only by God Himself as man: if, that is to say,…
“Did God need to justify Himself?” Barth asks ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 567). Does He need to demonstrate His justice to human beings in the world? Barth answers, as expected, No: “He does not need anything.” True enough in the abstract: God needs nothing outside Himself. But once God…
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