Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I just finished re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday . I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one…
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be…
I was inspired to write this article after reading John Ahern’s The Case for Shorter Hymnals first published on Theopolis Institute’s website on November 16, 2021. Mr. Ahern and I are writing with different audiences and emphases in mind. I am thankful we both share a mutual desire to see…
If you’ve spent any time in the social-media galaxy of Christian cultural commentators, you have almost definitely run across the Latin phrase Imago Dei . It means image of God . Why they usually say it in Latin, I couldn’t tell you. We saw it in the wake of the…
The Gospel of Matthew—indeed, the New Testament—begins with a list of names, and that list of names is introduced by this heading: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Why start like this? Why “the son of David” and “the son…
A blade is raised. A child wails. But the brow under the crown is untroubled. Solomon knows that the raising of the sword will reveal the true parent and the identity of the son. But how did he know this? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac certainly bears some of the…
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Ratramnus, most famous for his contribution to Eucharistic theology in his debate with Radbertus, was asked by a priest, Rimbert, whether the dogheads were human. Rimbert’s interest was evangelistic: If human, dogheads should be evangelized. Seems so, Ratramnus said. They live in villages, practice farming, wear clothes, and even keep…
Everyone in the Middle Ages knew that St. Christopher was a dog head, a man’s body with a dog’s head. A Welsh poem about King Arthur told of his battle with the dogheads near Edinburgh: “By the hundred they fell” before Excalibur. But where did they live? A few said…
Reflections on a class discussion earlier today about place, our connection to the ground, and gnosticism. 1) Blood and soil are “powers” that can and have dominated human life, and caused lots of human misery. 2) Jesus overcomes those powers. We are identified by water and feast, not by blood…
Psalm 105:28-36 lists the plagues. Some of them. But not in the order they happened. Instead of the ten plagues of exodus, there are only seven (darkness, water to blood, frogs, flies/gnats, hail, locusts, firstborn). Seven strikes a chord, as does the fact that the summary begins in darkness (reversing…
Niall Ferguson nicely summarizes the critiques of empire by dividing them between critiques that focus on the effect on subject peoples and critiques that focus on the effects on the subjectors. The first critiques, which focus on the effects on the subject peoples, can take a nationalist or a Marxist…
Obvious as the answer may seem, it is a question worth asking because the word has been so overused that important distinctions are being lost. Stephen Howe writes: “Ideas about empire have . . . seemed to spread and multiply beyond all limit or control. ‘Imperialism’, as a word has…
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