Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Hearing, Seeing, and History God is Word, not picture. He speaks, but He is not visible in Himself. Thus, God initiates history through language. He speaks the world into existence, and speaks to us to bring us out of formlessness and emptiness into the fullness of being His Bride. Similarly,…
The consensus of modern critical scholarship is that the book assigned to Isaiah was in fact composed by several different hands. "Deutero-Isaiah" supposedly begins with Isaiah 40:1. There are many good reasons for rejecting this conclusion. Among these, the narrative pattern of chapters 36-39 is a neglected piece of evidence.…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out throughout his many fascinating and occasionally quixotic writings and lectures that human life exists in four directions. These four directions are inward, outward, backward, and forward. In this article I want to explore these as they relate to the work of the Church. Each of…
14. Joseph and Judah Genesis 38 tells us about Judah’s sons and grandsons, and if we try to get these events into the time before the descent of the Hebrews into Goshen, it is very difficult to do so. But this passage is almost certainly dischronologized. Thematically Genesis 38 is…
From time to time I am asked what is good SF and fantasy that teenagers in Christian and home schools might enjoy. The following brief discussion is my answer that question. I’ve tried to point out authors and stories that are not widely known, and therefore have set aside G.…
"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awaken, some to life everlasting and others to disgrace, to contempt everlasting." This verse is often cited as proof that there was a belief in the resurrection of the body in the Old Testament times. In fact,…
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At the beginning of her discussion of Christian architecture in the Renaissance and Reformation, Jeanne Kilde ( Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture and Worship ) writes: “In the Renaissance period, the medieval notion of the church as the City of Heaven yielded to new ideas about…
John Paul II’s meditations on creation as gift in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body (180-1) are deeply stimulating. He begins from the observation that the gift of creation is a “radical” gift, that is, a gift that constitutes the recipient in the giving, “an…
In Piers the Plowman (9), William Langland recounts the story of the sons of God and the daughters of men. Though he extrapolates from the text, he gets the story right (I am quoting from the Penguin Classics edition, Piers the Ploughman (Penguin Classics) ): “All Cain’s progeny came to…
Hyde ( The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property , 50-51) distinguishes between “work” and “labor.” The first is what we do by the hour. Labor has its own pace, and there is no timetable or tool to make it work more efficiency: “Writing a poem, developing a…
Lewis Hyde has some wonderful reflections on the “labor of gratitude” in his The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (47-51): With “transformative gifts,” the recipient of the gift “feels gratitude. I would like to speak of gratitude as a labor undertaken by the soul to effect the…
Godbout ( The World of the Gift , 209-10) gives this searing critique of Girard. For Girard, he says, “violence is primary . . . no love is possible. There are only hatred and ‘desire.’” Girard’s own analysis undercuts his theory: “In his discussion of the judgment of Solomon, Girard…
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