Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We've all heard it, too often to count. The Apostle Paul was a misgynistic homophobic pro-slavery authoritarian, probably a repressed homosexual himself, the first Puritan - Puritan here defined as "someone who cannot sleep if someone in the world is having fun." To call this a caricature is too generous.…
Some of our forefathers believed in reading/singing the psalms in order. Today, when the psalms are even used at all, they tend to be used randomly, though sometimes tied to a church calendar or to the pastor’s sermon. The Bible does not bind us to any particular practice, but there…
". . . and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). Paul’s passing comment about the rock that followed the Israelites in the wilderness has often been treated as a bit of…
The story of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery is familiar to every child who has attended Sunday School. Informed that he would die, faithful King Hezekiah pleaded in tears for a longer life. God heard his prayers and saw his tears, and promised fifteen more years. As a sign that He…
When viewed as an allegory of biblical history, the controversial third act of Danny Boyle’s gripping sci-fi adventure is transformed from an illogical divergence into a blinding revelation. The following analysis contains spoilers for the movie “Sunshine.” The Creation Week is the elementary type that orders everything God has said…
In my last post , I told you the story of my current desire to understand philosopher D.C. Schindler’s metaphysical work. With this post, I start in to the venture. I begin by reflecting on what it is to be a thing. This matter always makes me laugh, and makes…
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Martinus de Boer ( Galatians , 372) notes that the verb “walk by the Spirit” in Galatians 5:25 isn’t the normal peritateo but stoicheo , which means “stand or move in a row or line” as in a military formation. De Boer notes that “there may be an allusion, whether…
Several times in his The Godly Image , Romanus Cessario observes how Greek patristic writers influence Thomas’s understanding of the satisfaction of Christ. Cessario traces a shift from Thomas’s early Anselmian juridicism to a more personalist understanding of the atonement in his mature work. The difference, he suggests, had to…
The scientific revolution is often characterized as a revolution in method. In place of speculative, deductive metaphysical science came experimental, empirical science. Philip Ball ( Curiosity ) argues that behind this was a revolution in mentality, in the questions that could be asked and investigated: “To the new philosophers, the…
Katha Pollitt thinks that advocates of abortion rights have been cowed into meekness. In Pro , she argues that abortion needs to be reclaimed as a “positive social good,” and “an essential option for women — not just ones in dramatic, terrible, body-and-soul-destroying situations, but all women — and thus…
Julia Kristeva’s vigorous, rambling Teresa, My Love is a very personal reaction to the life and writings of Teresa of Avila. Kristeva, a noted feminist cultural theorist, doesn’t share St. Teresa’s faith. Still, she gets to the heart of Teresa’s mysticism in this quotation: “After the dialogical Socrates, before the…
The desire of the flesh is set against the desire of the Spirit, Paul says, so that the two are in opposition (Galatians 5:17). Where they clash, the combat stymies human choice: “you may not do the things that you wish” (cf. Romans 7). By returning to the “flesh” of…
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