Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
G.K. Chesterton assumes a surprising and memorable perspective from which to view the events of Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11) The Donkey by: G.K. Chesterton When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head…
There is a common biblical principle: you must give back what you steal. In the Bible, restitution is repayment with interest. If you rob someone of their money, you have to pay back double what you stole. A thief must pay back fourfold if he steals a sheep, and if…
Identifying Isaiah’s suffering servant with the promised Messiah is unthinkable for a Jew because it combines the offices of humble priest and victorious king. While it is frustrating that Jews refuse to see the sufferings of Christ in Isaiah 53, the reluctance of Christians to interpret the passage in its…
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:6 (ESV) The command to praise God is pervasive throughout Scripture. In the verse above the Spirit calls all things with breath to praise the Lord. Song is also clearly featured all throughout Scripture and is a featured…
“Gender is a social construct.” That’s shocking to people who have assumed that gender and sex were synonyms but at least since I was in college, in the ‘80s, we were taught that “gender” refers to the forms, the customs, the traditions that our culture teaches us to define what…
In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies about (blesses and curses?) his twelve sons. The first three of them don’t fare well. Jacob recalls Reuben’s offense of taking his concubine (Genesis 35:22) and the murderous violence of Simeon’s and Levi against the Canaanite inhabitants of the city of Shechem (Genesis 34). He…
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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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