Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…
Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…
What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…
Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…
The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…
I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…
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Are we living in a time of world-revolutionary change? Impossible to say, of course, but there might be some hints contained in the developments of the last millennium. Rosenstock-Huessy notes that Western man has been formed by periodic world-historical revolutions since the 11th century: Gregorian (11th), the Reformation (16th), Puritan…
William Cavanaugh suggests that globalization represents a false catholicity, a unification of the human race organized around consumption and Hollywood blockbusters. That’s certainly one legitimate angle. On the other hand: The wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous, and Cain and Nimrod built cities long before David…
George L. Mosse’s Fallen Soldiers (Oxford 1990) is a fascinating study of the “Myth of War Experience” that developed between the French Revolution and came to a climax in World War I and its aftermath. Mosse develops a number of intertwined themes: the rise of volunteer armies after the French…
Rosenstock-Huessy notes the difference between animal birth and human childbirth, the main difference being that human parents remain with children after the birth: “marriage means to go from the blind act of the moment, through the whole life cycle to its most opposite point the childbirth,” and this shows “that…
With nationalism at its height in the nineteenth century, the common practice of giving children biblical names was a check on nationalist idolatry, a reminder that the child was part of Christendom, not merely of France, Germany, England, etc. Rosenstock-Huessy puts the point dramatically: “When biblical names disappeared in Europe…
In their Science & Grace (Crossway 2006), Tim Morris and Don Petcher helpfully define a law of nature as “God’s sustaining of, or man’s description of, that pattern of regularity that we observe in nature as God works out His purposes towards His own ends in HIs covenant faithfulness, through…
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