Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must…
Matthew is organized around 5 discourses, which trace out the history of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of God and Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus first speaks as a new Moses, instructing His disciples on a mountain about a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes…
The fall of the Sethites in Genesis 6 is the third fall of mankind, or the third degree of Adam’s original fall. Adam sinned in a Garden against his Father by stealing something he was supposed to wait to obtain. (“Every tree shall be food for you” Genesis 1:29.) Cain…
The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. Doug argues for angels,…
The prophecy of Jude concerns apostasy. An illustration of apostasy and its consequences is found in verse 6, which the New American Standard Bible translates this way: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for…
At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn't say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,”…
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Derrida polarizes gift and economy, gift and exchange, gift and the circle. Like Heidegger, he posits a quasi-transcendental giving that is not giving of something by someone to someone. This pure donation eludes the calculating circle of gift and return. As always, Derrida is on the verge of Trinitarian theology.…
Caputo ( The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) , 217 ) points to Derrida’s discussion of Matthew 6 as the initiation of “the duel between Christian and Jew.” Caputo sums up Derrida’s characterization: “This duel is always cast by…
Derrida’s philosophy is a tantalizing ghost of Judaism and/or Christianity, and that is no accident. In The Gift of Death, Second Edition & Literature in Secret (Religion and Postmodernism) , he places his work in the tradition of modern philosophy: What “engenders” the Christian themes that surround the gift, he…
What would have happened to modern and postmodern philosophy if the philosophers had read, and accepted, the account of the Aqedah in Hebrews 11: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was…
Caputo ( The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) , 181-5) notes that for Derrida “traditions trace out the circle of a debt,” and thus tradition does not constitute gift in the strict sense (which, on Derrida’s terms, elude debt).…
In The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) (174), John Caputo sums up Derrida’s claim that textuality is a matter of faith: “A text is but a misty, ephemeral, spectral thing, an event ( evenement ) with a kind of…
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