Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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Unlike many theorists who discuss the gift, Jacques Godbout ( The World of the Gift , 193) does not believe that is should “drown” everything, especially markets: “That would not only be impossible but also very harmful, for a great society (statistically speaking) needs the state and market apparatus. The…
Godbout ( The World of the Gift , 40-41 ) remarks on the fact that “in modern society, children are the only people to whom one can give without even being tempted to do an accounting.” Many (he says) give to children and don’t expect them to make any return…
Godbout ( The World of the Gift , 47) wonders about the curious “abnegation” of parents who convince their children that Santa, not they, made and gave that mountain of presents under the Christmas tree. One theory: “It’s as though the parents are trying to prove to themselves that they…
Jacques Godbout ( The World of the Gift , 37 ) asks why we wrap presents only to discard the wrapping. It is a “potlatch” gesture, a gesture of excess, “an utterly gratuitous extra.” Further, “it hides what is in circulation, thus demonstrating that what counts is not the hidden…
In his work on Geschenk Nach Form Und Inhalt , written i 1914, Wilhelm Gaul laid out many of the parameters for future discussion of the gift. Harry Liebersohn ( The Return of the Gift ) quotes this impressive passage: “What is striking at once about the ‘modern’ gift is…
A few quotations from the opening pages of Karl Bucher’s Industrial evolution; . Economic theory begins from the assumption that human beings have an “economic nature,” and that “From this economic nature a principle is supposed to spring, which controls all his actions that are directed to the satisfaction of…
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