Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every attempt to understand the Christian sacraments makes use of comparisons or analogies with other rituals, events, or customs. Calvin and those who followed him, for example, spoke of the sacraments as “seals,” and compared them to the “seal of approval” that an official impresses on a document. Thinking about…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out in his essay "Hitler and Israel, or On Prayer" (available for $2.00 from Biblical Horizons ) that it is God’s word "No!" that establishes in a culture the distinction between the Creator and the creature. The Bible repeatedly says "No!" to every human attempt to…
If you missed Gattaca at the movie theaters, you can probably check it out from your local video store now. And you should. This is one of those relatively rare thought-provoking movies that can stand being watched with brain in gear more than once. It is also poetic, sensitive, visually…
Part 4: The Nephilim Factor Western Civilization partakes of what I call "the Nephilim Factor." The Enoch Factor means that the pagans get there first. This is both a blessing and a danger. As a blessing, it means that they work out techniques of dominion over the lower creation that…
The Worship Service Then the one speaking with me took me by the hair and lifted me into the air in the middle of the great room. And as I watched, I saw people entering the room to the sound of the great bells outside. Then entered from all four…
Part 3: Philosophy (continued) If we realize that human beings are the images of God, and that man hates God, then we realize that all non-Christian political philosophy is founded on a fundamental hatred of other human beings, a hatred manifest in contempt. Rome, like Enoch, was founded on the…
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Berman offers this very sharp summary of Foucault’s work, whom he says is “about the only writer of the past decade who has had anything substantial to say about modernity” (Berman is writing in 1982). Then: “what he has to say is an endless, excruciating series of variations on the…
In the introduction to his All That Is Solid Melts Into Air , Marshall Berman argues that nineteenth century critics of modernity had a much richer grasp of the costs and promise of modernity than do twentieth century observers. Modern life is, Rousseau said, a whirlwind ( le tourbillon social…
The following is a portion of a lecture at the NSA disputatio. WHIGGISH HISTORY The Whigs were of course a loose British political alliance, the predecessor of today’s Liberal Democrats. The term was first applied, interestingly, to the Scottish Covenanters who marched on Edinburgh in 1648, and then to the…
In a recent issue of TNR , Alan Wolfe reviewed David Kuo’s book telling the story of his service in the current Bush administration. Kuo worked in the office of faith-based initiatives, and though he left the administration he still praises Bush because of his Christian testimony. What strikes Wolfe…
Thinking again about Mike Featherstone’s comments on the fact that multiculturalism developed first in Southern Hemisphere cities (quoted in a post from September 2006), it strikes me that one of the dynamics of the current global situation is a reversal of colonialism. That’s true in the sense that Featherstone notes…
The point of theories of “mass culture” is not so much the “mass” as the “culture.” Goods and services may be distributed to a large number of people in economies where what is called “mass culture” doesn’t exist. When theorists use the phrase, they want to emphasize the fact that…
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