Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Job appears in the Bible as a true story and it is regarded as such in other Scripture: As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the…
Thanksgiving is warfare. Gratitude is a weapon. Wield it well. Give thanks for the preparation. The hustle and bustle, the messy kitchen, the endless cleaning, the extra chairs, and stained tablecloths sing the song of hospitality. God desires that we prepare a place for friends and strangers, feasting and laughing,…
We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley. 1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom…
1 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? 2 Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth? Job 39 We have and we do, Lord God. Spring is calving season.…
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to Yahweh. - Exodus 35:2 The instructions for building the tabernacle end with a Sabbath command and the narrative about building begins with a Sabbath command, before…
High in the list of now forgotten sins is simony. It was not always so: the medieval schoolmen believed simony to be the worst of ecclesiastical crimes and waged a centuries long campaign to purge the Church of this financial and spiritual corruption. As the schoolmen robustly defined it, “simony…
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Though the presence of Christ has been central to Eucharistic theology, Thomas O'Loughlin ( The Eucharist ) argues that in Tridentine Catholicism”the dominant thinking about the event of physical engagement with the Eucharist was imagined in terms of a sacred commodity. The priest ‘confected' the Eucharist, it was reserved for…
Early in his Forgiveness in Victorian Literature , Richard Gibson quotes Sarah Beckwith's observation that “promising and forgiving [are] acts of making community” (27). Gibson draws on Hannah Arendt's analysis to fill out the picture. Promises reduce the unpredictability of the future, while “forgiveness confronts the crisis of the past.…
Margaret Doody's Jane Austen's Names is a treasure chest. On the assumption that “an artist cannot do anything slovenly,” Doody explores the historical significance of the real place names that appear in Austen's novels, teases out the puns in the characters' names, suggests that Austen was sensitive to the ethnic…
Key terms of ancient philosophy are rare or entirely absent in the New Testament. Aristotle considered the study of causes ( aitia ) and principles ( archai ) to be the subject matter of first philosophy ( Metaphysics A.1,981b28), and he defines metaphysics as the study “of the things which…
Norberto Bobbio ( Left and Right ) claims that left and right are different because of their different evaluations of equality. He starts from the uncontroversial fact that people are equal in certain respects, unequal in others, and claims that “We can then correctly define as egalitarians those who ,…
John Rawls's notion of “difference principle” is an alternative to a meritocratic regime, but it is also different from equality of result. As Michael Sandell explains in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , Rawls denies that the difference principle eliminates distinctions between persons. The difference principle aims at the…
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