Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One common trope which is regularly invoked in current debates about the defensibility versus the danger of Christian engagement with critical theories (or, species of Critical Theory) is the idea of “ eating the meat but spitting out the bones .” Usually not far behind is a nod to the…
I am writing about the book of Proverbs in the Bible and “Eschatology.” I don’t refer only to the end of time, or “last things” that will happen in history before it ends as we know it. I am referring to all times of God’s judgment wherein He ends an…
“Unity” is the word of the day. In his inaugural address, Joe Biden invoked St. Augustine to inspire Americans to come together around certain shared values. As others have recently argued, Biden misreads Augustine in important ways. My argument here is that if we seek political unity and civic health…
This is part two of a series which began here ( The Half Shekel Temple Tax ) in which I answer back, hoping not to rebut but to glorify, some observations Peter Leithart made in a thought-provoking piece about the Temple Tax as atonement ( Atonement Money ). Adding economic…
It is now commonplace to characterize Wokeness (or “ Wokeism ”) as a religion , or at least religion-like . What I would like to explore is an elaboration on this emergent consensus, supplementing it with some theological analysis. Wokeness, I propose, is a form of post-Protestant neopaganism. It resembles…
Science Fiction movies often retell old stories and myths with greater impact for modern people. A being from another world or a technologically advanced human can embody an ancient god or demon and viewers are suddenly unwittingly enthralled by Ur tales that emerged from hundreds of years of human experience.…
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Elias notes that table manners reflect social relations more generally: “People who ate together in the way customary in the Middle Ages, taking meat with their fingers from the same dish, wine from the same goblet, soup from the same pot or the same plate . . . - such…
Elias again: “In the eleventh century a Venetian doge married a Greek princess. In her Byzantine circle the fork was clearly in use. At any rate, we hear that she lifted food to her mouth ‘by means of little gold forks with two prongs.’ “This gave rise in Venice to…
Elias suggests that the blossoming of German literature in the late 18th century was largely led by middle-class writers and thinkers whose tastes and styles ran directly counter to the Francophile culture of Frederick’s court: “This German literary movement, whose exponents included Klopstock, Herder, Lessing, the poets of Sturm und…
A couple of weeks ago, I quoted Frederick the Great’s judgment that Shakespeare’s plays were fit only for “savages of Canada,” what with their “jumble of lowliness and grandeur, of buffoonery and tragedy,” their sins “against all the rules of the theatre, rules which are not at all arbitrary.” Frederick…
A few scattered notes on this section of John’s first epistle. 1) There is a repeated emphasis on the contrast between word and action, word and walk. Three times John uses the clause “if we say that” (1:6, 8, 10), and another three times he uses “the one who says”…
INTRODUCTION John’s gospel is about the character of God: He proclaims that God is light, and has no darkness at all (1:5). This gospel comes with the demand to walk in the light (1:6). What does that mean? THE TEXT “This is the message which we have heard from Him…
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