Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…
I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…
James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…
This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…
1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…
“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…
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Balances were essential to commerce in ancient Israel, weighing not only commodities to be bought and sold but in some cases weighing the gold and silver that served as the medium of exchange. A merchant could cheat customers by adjusting the scales to his advantage. According to Proverbs 11:1, such…
“Do not move an ancient landmark,” Solomon says in Proverbs 23:10. Just what a king would say: Kings want to keep things just as they are, and convince everyone that they have always been so, so long as they can sit on top of the heap. But the sequel of…
Michael Bruno’s Political Augustinianism is a thorough examination of recent interpretations of Augustine’s political thought, starting with French scholars like H.I. Marrou and H. X. Arquillière, whose 1933 L’Augustinianisme Politique set the terms for much subsequent discussion, through the realist uses of Augustine in Niebuhr and the “secularist” interpretation of…
George Friedman has written that the promise of the European union was not merely prosperity and peace, but joy: “the joy of joining men into a single brotherhood, overcoming the divisions of mere custom.” But here’s the rub: Europeans have to be willing to share the same fate if they…
The TLS reviewer of Peter Unger’s Empty Ideas is not much impressed with Unger’s critique of analytic philosophy. According to Unger, “Contemporary analytic metaphysicians see themselves as theorizing boldly and systematically about the deepest and most general nature of reality. In Peter Unger’s view, they are deluded: far from resuming…
Philip Caldwell’s Liturgy As Revelation is a successful book on several levels. Caldwell fills out recent accounts of twentieth-century Catholicism by attending to some lesser-known figures associated in various ways with the nouvelle theologie : Rene Latourelle, Salvatore Marsili, Gustave Martelet, and, a later figure, Avery Dulles. Caldwell’s analyses of…
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