Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
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The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
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Barth’s theology of justification has many virtues. Let me highlight only a couple of them. For starters, Barth’s is an utterly, manically theocentric account of justification. This comes through in large ways and small. One of the most striking indications of this is the way he deals with the question…
Vladimir Jankelevitch ( Le Pur et l’Impur , 11) observes that we apply the concept of purity to wine and milk, defining the purity of beverages in opposition to admixture of other ingredients. In each case “purity” prohibits mixture, especially mixture of a thing with its supposed opposite. Pure poetry…
Barth in fully Barthian regalia ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 186-7): “As God was in Christ, far from being against Himself, or at disunity with Himself, He has put into effect the freedom of His divine love, the love in which He is divinely free. He has therefore done and…
Barth famously answers Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? by talking about the “Judge judged in our place” ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 ). In a passage summarizing the gospel account of Jesus’s life, he gives this remarkable summary of the “exchange of roles” that occurs in the gospel: “Those who are to…
A great Cur Deus Homo moment from Barth ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 553): “What we men must suffer - if it is to be suffered in accordance with the righteousness of God - can be suffered for us only by God Himself as man: if, that is to say,…
“Did God need to justify Himself?” Barth asks ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 567). Does He need to demonstrate His justice to human beings in the world? Barth answers, as expected, No: “He does not need anything.” True enough in the abstract: God needs nothing outside Himself. But once God…
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