Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I was still a high school student the first time I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I will never forget the powerful impact the book had on me. Of course, as a second year student, I did not fully digest the book. In spite of subsequent readings, I…
Crises force questions of identity. Identities may remain assumed until some event, or series of events, challenge what may have been taken for granted. The search for identity is an anxious one precisely because it tends to happen in times of upheaval and uncertainty. In his recent book, Orthoxox Anglican…
Peter Leithart recently wrote a fascinating short piece about the Half Shekel Temple Tax as an atonement. Leithart argues three main points. First that the Sanctuary Shekel was heavier, i.e., more valuable than the everyday shekel. Second, he offers some analysis about the order of magnitude of the purchasing power…
There is no denial from the careful reader that 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are telling the same story. Perhaps we should say, virtually the same story. But that the stories are cut from the same cloth is undeniable. What we have over these three chapters—1 Samuel 24-26—is a very…
In his novel That Hideous Strength , C.S. Lewis is able to masterfully illustrate in narrative form so many of his insights about the subversive dangers of Leftist political dogma to Christian civilization. Perceptive essays from Lewis like “The Abolition of Man” and “The Inner Ring” are fleshed out in…
At a very practical level, the Evangelical Church has been injected with counterfeit spiritualities. We are a people looking for a city, whose builder may only be in office for four years. Our temptation to veer to the side of the temporal is striking in our day, especially as the…
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If you’re in the vicinity of Duke, you might be interested in a conference sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, in cooperation with the Duke Divinity School, on May 21-23, at Duke. The theme is “Preaching, Teaching, and Living the Bible.” Speakers include Robert Jenson, Rusty Reno,…
Marjorie Garber has, as usual, some insightful things to say about Merchant of Venice: 1) She describes the play as “Shakespeare’s great play about difference,” pointing to the apparent stark contrasts of Christian and Jew, Venice and Belmont, male and female. Yet, she also notes that the play is busy…
A.R. Braunmuller offers some suggestive comments in his introduction to the Merchant of Venice in the Pelican Shakespeare. Having summarized Portia’s speech (which he suggests might be a “setup that turns on a technicality” that “turns back on Shylock a legal rigidity he had been duped into demanding”), he notes…
Thomas argues that “if the human nature is not united to God the Word in person, it is not united to him in any way, and thus belief in the incarnation is altogether done away with, which subverts the entire Christian faith.” But since there is a union, it must…
Frederick Bauerschmidt claims that “Aquinas is in fact the first medieval theologian in the West to quote directly from the Council of Chalcedon.” This is remarkable on all sorts of levels, not least because of the questions it raises about the authority of the ecumenical councils in medieval thought.
INTRODUCTION Seneca’s de Beneficiis was known to the Christian Middle Ages, as were some of the gift and gratitude customs of the Roman world. We’ll examine the use that Aquinas makes of Seneca when we get to the Summa later this week. But in addition to these ancient sources, medieval…
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