Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When a certain Samaritan village refused Jesus’ attempt to visit, James and John asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven upon it. The allusion to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is evident, but, as the story shows, James’ and John’s thinking was entirely warped. Jesus rebuked…
In the first part of this essay, I considered paideia (formation)and mimesis (imitation) in the context of Aristotle’s virtue ethics and that of the New Testament. The overall concern is to realize how relevant is Aristotle’s ethics both to diagnosing our current malaise and to enculturing our children, though we…
In these posts I am inviting you into my philosophical reflection about integration , the absence of which we feel palpably in our fragmented world. My hope is for us to understand it more deeply, and to be ourselves reintegrated in the process. At this point in this extended inquiry…
It’s hard to imagine someone, centuries from now, mistaking our culture for a moral highpoint in the history of the West. Increasingly the news is dominated by school shootings, abusive policing, sexploitation of women, and increasing rates of suicide, addiction, and divorce. In response, the Left calls for regulations, surveillance,…
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” (Ps. 34:17-18) God is listening. He is listening when we ask Him for financial provision,…
The allusions to Mt. Sinai in the transfiguration story point to Jesus as a new Moses and even more as Yahweh, the God who met Moses and Elijah on the mountain. The fact that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah spoke of Jesus’ “exodus” suggests that the mountain of transfiguration was intended…
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Postmodern intellectuals believe they have seen through the arrogant or naive efforts of earlier generations of intellectuals. Now we see the folly of foundationalism, now we see that all knowledge is intertwined with regimes of power-knowledge, now we know that all thought arises from knotty aporias. We see that their…
Postmodern intellectuals believe they have seen through the arrogant or naive efforts of earlier generations of intellectuals. Now we see the folly of foundationalism, now we see that all knowledge is intertwined with regimes of power-knowledge, now we know that all thought arises from knotty aporias. We see that their…
Is truth universal? Is the only alternative to an idea of the universalism of all truth an affirmation of the relativism of all truth? This seems to be a false dichotomy from the beginning. Upon a moment’s reflection, it seems clear that the truth is that some truths are relative…
Featherstone suggests that postmodernism is in part a “loss of confidence on the part of the intellectuals in the universal potential of their project.” Thus, postmodern theory is marked by “tendencies toward indeterminacies , the recognition of openness, pluralism, randomness, eclecticism, incoherence, paralogism, intertextuality, the primacy of the many over…
In a recent First Things review, Gilbert Meilander summarized Oliver O’Donovan’s theory of punishment as follows: “anything called punishment must be ‘backward-looking’ and hence, in some sense, retributive. But he is not persuaded by any account of retribution that things of it as a simple exchange - in which the…
INTRODUCTION It is often said that fourth acts in Shakespeare plays are weak. Action slows down, the principal character is sometimes off stage, and the drama seems to dissipate before the final catastrophe. Act 4 of Macbeth begins with Macbeth’s renewed contact with the witches, but then trails off in…
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