Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Jamie Soles is the reason I know my way around a guitar. When my guitar teacher put the sheet music for Eine Kleine Nachtmusick in my fourteen-year-old hands, I balked. He gave me “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” I learned half of it. At home, I ignored my teacher’s instructions and tugged…
This is a tough era for mothers. Regard for mothers, while it is always booming in some circles, is decidedly lacking in the prevailing winds of the milieu. In high demand by contrast is contribution to the work force, being a consumer, and basic economic survival, often as a solitary…
After the dark quiet of the year’s beginning, I return now to pick up the threads of my reflection on integration. This is my own personal inquiry, and for me it is no academic exercise but rather the forefront of my personal quest for the real. My hope is that…
The chiastic structure of The Hobbit we considered in the previous essay is highly suggestive of what might lie in store for The Lord of the Rings saga. It is undoubtedly the case that J. R. R. Tolkien was a literary craftsman. It may even be the case he is…
Structure plays an important part of any literary work, whether poetry or prose. It adds to the beauty and depth of the work and allows insight to be gained about what the author is trying to communicate. The question that concerns us here is whether or not there exists an…
Can we learn to communicate from an outside intelligence? Spoiler Alert! If you have not yet seen the movie, this article may provide you with a great deal more information than you wished to know at this point. Since the 1999 film The Matrix received careful scrutiny on many fronts…
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T he great question haunting late medieval piety was that of the inadequacy of human piety. As Berndt Hamm puts it ( Reformation of Faith ), the “harrowing question” was that of the “spiritual inadequacy” of Christians (88). The late medieval answer was to reduce the requirements necessary to meet…
I n his Landscape, Liberty and Authority , Tim Fulford examines the paradox of William Gilpin's travel writings and tour-leading in the picturesque wilds of Wales, England, and Scotland. Gilpin was aware that “the picturesque might be socially dangerous,” so much so that he apologizes to the noble landowners whose…
I n his contribution to Signifying Identities , Fredrik Barth suggests that our notion of political, economic and social boundaries is an extension of the feeling that a tool extends the body: When you hold a knife or a spoon in your hand and use it as an implement, the…
G uy G. Stroumsa writes in The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity that “For Weber, as is well known, the most striking ‘disenchantment of the world' in history occurred with the rise of the ‘inner-worldly' asceticism ( innerweltliche Askese ) of the Calvinist Reformation. And yet, it…
M ichel de Certeau ( The Writing of History , 126-7) quotes Alphonse Dupront on the post-Reformation situation of the church: “a first piece of raw material, as obvious as capital for the modern mind, is the progressive promotion of heresy in confession and of confession in church. . .…
In a 1971 essay, H.G. Koenigsberger challenged the notion that the Reformation broke up a unified Europe. He criticizes historians and social scientists for assuming a norm of unity: “We have assumed that the theological and ecclesiastical unity of Catholic Christendom was its natural condition and that, in consequence, the…
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