Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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Emery points out that Thomas’ Trinitarian account of creation makes the Word the art of God: “The Word is . . . the reason of creatures from a double point of view, that of exemplar causality (the expression, the conception of creatures) and that of efficient causality (the accomplishment of…
According to Gilles Emery, Aquinas provides a Trinitarian account of creation. The processions within the being of God are the uncreated exemplars of the acts of creation. Emery (in a contribution to The Theology of Thomas Aquinas ): “In God, procession signified the essential communication of the fullness of divinity:…
Anna Wilson has a stimulating essay on the rise of biography after the conversion of Constantine, the Vita Constantini of Eusebius being the leading model. The rise of biography manifests the change in the fortunes of the church, as bios replaced martyrion as the leading subject of Christian biographical writing.…
An anonymous homily of the late 4th century: “Scripture has taken the Sabbath to mean rest . . . . So also the Lord having wrought the consummation, having suffered on Friday and finished his works for the restoration of fallen man, rests the seventh day and abides in the…
Barnes notes an incident recorded by Sozomen that represents the typical relationship between church and emperor under Constantine. Basil of Ancyra, along with a number of other bishops, was deposed by the Council of Constantinople in 360. It was alleged that Basil”gave orders to the civil authorities to sentence clergy…
Gibbon wrote that “the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers, which had never been imposed on the free spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced and confirmed by the legal establishment of Christianity” with the result that “a secret conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions embarrassed the operations…
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