Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…
“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…
Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…
Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…
In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…
I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…
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Many writers of the English Enlightenment attempted to formulate an original monotheistic “natural religion” that could be contrasted with the “positive religion” of Christianity. Priests suppressed the true natural religion that was maintained in secret by philosophers until they could teach it openly. The form of this historical account is…
In 1517, Ulrich von Hutton published a German translation of Lorenzo Valla’s demonstration that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. Luther read it early and said in a 1520 letter, “Good heavens! what darkness and wickedness is at Rome. I am in such a fit that I scarcely doubt…
What makes the Spirit Holy? Holy in Scripture means “claimed by indwelling glory.” The tabernacle is consecrated as holy space by the indwelling glory of Yahweh. Saints are those claimed by the indwelling of the Spirit. The Spirit is Holy because the Spirit is claimed, by Father and Son. He…
The Donation of Constantine includes a reference to the legend that Constantine was cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester sometime in the 310s, and then baptized. Constantine is recorded as saying “on the first day after receiving the mystery of the holy baptism, and after the cure of my body…
Emery says that for Aquinas the diversity of creation is founded in the personal plurality of the divine relations: “One cannot emphasize more forcefully the positive value of the multiplicity of creature; Saint Thomas does not conceive of plurality as a decline from unity, but to the contrary, as a…
Thomas’ Trinitarian account of creation has not only a Christological but a pneumatological dimension, Emery argues. Thomas’ Augustinian pneumatology is rooted in his recognition that within the “God who loves himself,” there is a God who is loved and a love that is God. Especially in his later work, he…
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