Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Ten-thousand ‘yeses’ and a single ‘no.’ From bough it dangles, beauty to the eyes, For belly, food, a fruit to make one wise. Too soon, they eat; they know; the leaves they sew, But, oh! the Love who asks, “Where did you go?” Confessions flow from under leaf’s disguise; A…
In his masterful work, De Doctrina Christiana , Augustine of Hippo writes: I would have learned men to know that the authors of our Scriptures use all those forms of expression which grammarians call by the Greek name tropes, and use them more freely and in greater variety than people…
“In accordance with the creation pattern, God sovereignly took hold of Adam and put him to sleep. Then God divided Adam by removing flesh and bone from his side, and restructured humanity into male and female. When Adam awoke, God distributed the woman to him. Adam gazed upon her and…
Greta Gerwig’s new film, Barbie, has been criticized, probably rightly, for having too many ideas and layers to properly bring in any for a landing. Gerwig herself thought the script was so “ wild and anarchic ” that she was surprised WB agreed to make it. Many see it as…
“Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey” (Matt. 3:4). Why is John the Baptizer clothed with camel’s hair? Why does he want to look like a camel? Or at least: what does he expect…
In the second greatest story ever told, The Brothers Karamazov , Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of a family plagued by the lasting legacy of sin’s destructive power and the all-surpassing truth that God is Light and in Him is no darkness. The young protagonist, Alyosha, is a monk committed…
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Reviewing two new translations of the Iliad (by Peter Green and Barry Powell ), Hayden Pelliccia explores some of the challenges of translating Homer. It starts from the very beginning. Homer writes (in Greek word order): “Wrath sing, goddess, Peleus-son Achilles’, baneful, which hurled.” What's an English translator to do?…
The responses to the Nobel selection of Kazuo Ishiguro for the 2017 literature prize drew mixed, underwhelmed responses. Someone wrote that he wasn't awarded the prize for any recent books. The Paris Review , though, posted an old interview to celebrate. As readers of Ishiguro's novels would expect, the author…
In Introduction to Christianity , Joseph Ratzinger explains how the dogma of the Trinity emerged from early Christian experience. The apostles discovered that "in Jesus Christ one meets a man who at the same time knows and professes himself to be the Son of God. One finds God in the…
Peter Brown reviews of Sarah Ruden's new translation of Augustine's Confessions in this weeks New York Review of Books . I can't speak to the translation, but I can speak to the reviewer: Everything Peter Brown writes is worth reading. He comments on Ruden's decision to translate dominus as "master"…
As we would expect, Rosenstock-Huessy assembles his grammatical material into a Cross. With the distinction of words and names in mind, we can see how Rosenstock-Huessy describes the function of speech in human life and society in a quadrilateral manner. He develops his point through a brief phenomenology of speech.…
Old Testament purity rules are badly understood, and a host of myths have surrounded them. Here I discuss three. Myth #1: Uncleanness is "dirtiness." Though there is some overlap between "dirt" and "impurity," the latter has a specific significance. If we take Mary Douglas's definition of dirt as “matter out…
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