Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If utopia is a perfect place or at least the best possible social arrangement, it must be a very dull place where any change is a change for worse and not for better, where nothing can be new and good at the same time. There can be no conflict in…
Christians, even those who say much about ‘incarnational’ faith, can say surprisingly little about the way that God claims our bodies . Perhaps this is most striking in treatments of baptism, where the intensely bodily character of the rite would especially seem to invite comment. Even if the term ‘baptism’…
Dear Pastor, I believe the locus of the difference between us is your statement here: "There are mothers who choose to risk their lives and even die to preserve the fetus, there are those who wouldn't. There are the circumstances of the individual, family, income, community, illness, risk factors, etc..…
New Year’s resolutions for weight loss are practically on the liturgical calendar of America. Somewhere around the beginning of a new year, people resolve that they will get in better shape. Some are made to feel guilty by the obesity police in our country (whose standards are, many times, very…
Click HERE for Part 1 After sending my letter to the local pastors, I received a long and thoughtful post from one of the local pastors, and it was sent not just to me, but to all of the pastors whom I e-mailed. Unfortunately, I do not feel I can…
Narrative and story have been all the rage in theology for the last few decades. The attractions are obvious. Narrative theologians favor the active, unpredictable, vibrant God of Scripture to the impersonal first principle of philosophical theology. Narrative theologians reject the notion that theologians need to justify their work by…
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Robin Lane Fox ( Pagans and Christians ) summarizes Constantine’s telling of the story of Daniel: In the court of Cambyses, Daniel “worked his miracles and prayed intently three times a day. The Magi became jealous of this new superior, and so he cast him to lions in the royal…
That’s how Stroumsa describes early Christianity, because of its preference for the small, portable codex over the traditional, sacred but quite cumbersome scroll. The codex had practical advantages, but Stroumsa thinks that something else was at work: “In going against all religious and cultural norms, the Christians manifestly knew that…
Guy Stroumsa’s book, The End of Sacrifice (just released from the University of Chicago) is small in size but raises huge questions. Based on lectures delivered at the College de France, Stroumsa’s book examines religious, religio-political and religio-anthropological shifts during the first centuries after Christ. He sees several new emphases…
Eusebius ( Gospel Preparation , 4.17) charges that human sacrifice was regularly practiced by ancient peoples: “And whether it is Phylarchus, or any one else, who records that all the Greeks, before going out to their wars, offer a human sacrifice, do not thou hesitate to take him also as…
Aristotle defined magnanimity or “great-mindedness” as a proper estimate of one’s merits: “The Great-minded man is then, as far as greatness is concerned, at the summit, but in respect of propriety he is in the mean, because he estimates himself at his real value (the other characters respectively are in…
In his Oration to the Saints , Constantine repeats the patristic commonplace that Greek philosophy owed a debt to Moses: “Moses excelled his predecessors in wisdom to such a degree that even those who were praised by the nations as wise men and philosophers came to emulate his wisdom. For…
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