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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B orn to Run is an anthem of escape, seemingly an exodus from the confinements of small-town America: “H-Oh, Baby this town rips the bones from your back / It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap / We gotta get out while we’re young / ‘Cause tramps like us,…
T errence Rafferty calls filmmaker Guillermo del Toro the “Master of Highbrow Horror” ( The Atlantic ). He traces del Toro’s aesthetic to a childlike mix of fear and fascination: “Toro’s work isn’t simply the something’s-out-to-get-you feeling of conventional scare pictures. It’s fear mixed with fascination, a childlike wonder at…
I n an essay on the notion of “cosmopolitanism,” Wayne Cristaudo presents Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy as thinkers who propose an un philosophical cosmopolitanism. That un- is critical, Crustaudo thinks, to a genuine recognition of and reckoning with difference: Both Rosenzweig and Rosenstock oppose “the more typical philosophical approach…
J anet Adelman ( Blood Relations ) devotes an interesting chapter to analyzing Lancelot’s departure from Shylock’s house, and his strange reunion with his father Gobbo, in Merchant of Venice . Lancelot has been Shylock’s servant, but he has had enough and, like Shylock’s daughter Jessica, he leaves for the…
I n his provocative essay on Gender , Ivan Illich describes a shift from “vernacular gender” to “social sex.” By the former, he meant “a distinction in behavior, a distinction universal in vernacular cultures. It distinguishes places, times, tools, tasks, forms of speech, gestures, and perceptions that are associated with…
Ivan Illich ( Gender ) points to the differences between the activities of a modern housewife and those of her grandmother. They are practically and economically quite distinct. “When a modern housewife goes to the market, picks up the eggs, drives them home in her car, takes the elevator to…
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