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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Saba Mahmood and Peter G. Danchin examine religious liberty cases from Egypt (publicly an Islamic state whose laws are based in sharia), the European Union, and the U.S. Despite differences, they highlight the remarkable similar dilemmas that arise in these very different legal systems. The common antinomies emerge because of…
In 1969, Carlo Lancellotti writes in Commonweal , the journal " Esprit published an exchange between two of the best-known Catholic intellectuals of the time. One was Jean-Marie Domenach, who in 1957 had succeeded Emmanuel Mounier as editor of Esprit and de facto flag-bearer of 'progressive' French Catholicism. The other…
In a scathing TLS piece , John Gray describes the "un-liberty" of "hyperliberalism," today most clearly evident on university campuses. Under the older liberal regime, "Academic disciplines cherished their orthodoxies, and dissenters could face difficulties in being heard. But visiting lecturers were rarely disinvited because their views were deemed unspeakable,…
JN Figgis isn't a household name these days, but he was an important Christian political thinker of the early twentieth century. Raised in a Calvinist home, he abandoned his childhood faith for some years, before returning to Christianity while at Cambridge. But his real "conversion," according to David Nicholls (…
Johannes Zachhuber argues, against Richard Cross, that Gregory of Nyssa holds to a "collection theory" of universals. That is, universals are collections of individuals, but genuine wholes, not merely a summation of individuals. For Gregory, this is not nominalism; universals are real. And the universal is indivisibly immanent in each…
In a 2016 article , Rogers Brubaker describes a trend in European politics. Having defined the enemy of European civilization as "Islam," rightists in Europe have come to define themselves in religio-civilizational terms as well. They are posing as defenders of "Christianity." Problem is, many of their beliefs are distinctly…
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