Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…
Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…
What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…
Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…
The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…
I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…
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Augustine describes “pride of life” in part as follows: “The temptation is to wish to be feared or loved by people for no reason other than the joy derived from such power, which is no joy at all. It is a wretched life, and vanity is repulsive . . .…
1 John 2:15: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. As we’ve seen this morning, John poses a stark either/or choice. Our lives are directed by our loves; what we love determines what path we take in life. Ultimately, there are only two…
John says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world,” and we immediately scurry around to find rationalizations and escape routes. Is John saying that cigarettes and beer and symphony orchestras and dancing and watching movies and art museums and playing video games are inherently sinful? Didn’t…
Stallybrass and White again: “increasingly from the sixteenth century pigs were present and high visible in the city . They wandered through the streets, sometimes biting and even killing small children: in 1608 the young Sir Hugh Cholmley was attacked by a sow. A Jacobean starchmaker kept 200 pigs in…
After a survey of the exotica on display in fairs in the 18th-19th centuries, Stallybrass and White conclude that the fairs do not, as Bakhtin argued, enact a grotesque inversion of civilized hierarchies, but instead reinforce those very hierarchies. Two passages are particularly important: “One could even mount the precise…
English fairs in earlier centuries displayed wares and displays from all over the world. At one there was an animal described as “a noble creature, which much resembled a Wild Hairy man” whose main skill was to doff his hat and show “his respects to the Company, and smoaks a…
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