Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We lost Crimea. That is very clear. Putin proved he was not lying when he said he would place women and children ahead of his soldiers to storm Ukrainian military bases. Russian soldiers did exactly that with women (some who volunteered and some who were forced). Russia now occupies all…
Sound is an indicator of life and energy. “Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production to exist at all.” Things don’t have to be alive to make themselves visible, and “a primitive hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an elephant when the…
In the most famous section of his best-known novel, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov brings forward his case against God. He opens with a horrific litany of outrages against children. Turkish soldiers make a baby laugh and then shoot a pistol into his face. A little girl is beaten, thrashed, kicked by…
At the heart of Esther Lightcap Meek's splendid Little Manual for Knowing is a concept she picked up from Michael Polanyi, "subsidiary-focal integration." The concept begins from the insight that all our knowing, all our experience, is double. We focus on something, but we are capable of "indwelling" that focal…
Jesus promises the overcomers of Pergamum "hidden manna" and a "white stone." The hidden manna is often linked with the manna stashed away in the ark of the covenant. The white stone has proved more elusive. Exodus tells us that manna was white (Exodus 16:31) and like bdellium (Numbers 11:7),…
Leviticus 23 begins with a reference to “Yahweh’s appointed times” ( mo’ade-YHWH ). Mo’ed is the common term for the feasts of Israel. A few dimensions to this term. First, it means “appointed time” or “designated time.” It is a time set by Yahweh. Yahweh has claimed certain times as…
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J ohn Bale, bishop of Ossory from 1495 to 1563, was a polemicist and historian, author of the first known verse drama in English, and commentator on the Apocalypse. The latter is titled An Image of Both Churches , an examination of the true and false churches in the book…
H ippolytus doesn’t convince with his interpretation of prophecy in On Christ and AntiChrist , but along the way he offers some lovely meditations on the cross and the church. The cross, He says, is the weaver’s loom on which Jesus makes His bridegroom robes: “whereas the Word of God…
I n a 2005 interview with the Paris Review , Australian poet Les Murray describes his family’s religious background, and the reasons for his conversion to Catholicism: The Murrays were old-style Free Kirk Presbyterians. They ranged from devout to indifferent, but most had at least a touch of that Calvinist…
T. A. Noble ( Holy Trinity, Holy People , 7) says this about the role of the Bible in theology in a discussion of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (which, he rightly says, isn’t just Wesleyan): It is not the task of theology merely to expound and elaborate and refine the church’s…
I t’s been a metaphysical dogma for philosophers from Scholastics to Cartesians that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. John Milbank begs to differ. Writing in defense of the historicity of the Gospels’ account of the crucifixion ( Being Reconciled , 84), Milbank points out that “well-attested and…
In a brilliant 2013 article in Communio , D.C. Schindler examines the “totalitarian logic of self-limitation” within liberal order. He argues that any actual common good must precede a particular person's share in the good; the whole precedes sharing by the parts. A ruse appears at the heart of liberal…
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