Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
C. S. Lewis tackled what is perhaps the most difficult and oft-heard objection to the Christian God in his classic, The Problem of Pain. 1 “If God were good,” Lewis restates the problem, “He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be…
There is nothing incongruous about assuming that Jesus lamented over His people on three separate occasions and that on two of those occasions, He expressed Himself in almost identical language. Two lamentations are recorded in the Gospel of Luke and are clearly marked as distinct. They are also expressed in…
In the Anglican Church in North America, the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood continues to be discussed with each diocese left to decide its own practice. A recurring point of debate is how we are to understand the priest’s representative role in the liturgy. Emily McGowin, in a…
The Theopolis Institute recently added two new members to its Board of Directors, Josh Rollins and Sarah Moore. Josh has recently served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development for MeTEOR Education, and was previously Chief Financial Officer at MeTEOR. He brings a wealth of finance experience, and will take…
Since moving to Englewood, Colorado, I have been blessed to be involved in the nuts-and-bolts practice of Church unity. The pastors here talk about the One Church in Englewood, and mean it. They love each other, pray fervently for each other, and long for the unity they enjoy to spread…
One day, the author Samuel Clemens cut himself shaving. He was an inveterate foul-mouth and on this occasion recited the entirety of his iniquitous vocabulary. When he was finished, his wife, hoping to shock him, repeated every word he said. Clemens responded, "You have the words, dear, but you don't…
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Timothy Furry’s Allegorizing History is a careful, engaging study of the Venerable Bede’s understanding of history, and of biblical hermeneutics. But perhaps the book’s greatest interest comes at the end, in a more theoretical conclusion, where Furry draws on the work of Frank Ankersmit to argue that history-writing is invariably…
Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s contribution to Trinity and Salvation is on the Trinity and music. Fitzgerald overstates when she called about “musical refutation” of heresy, but her analogies are illuminating. She points to chords as vestigiae Trinitatis : “Each note of the major triad has its own specific relationship with the other…
According to Frederick Ahl ( Metaformations , 18), we have an irrefutable syllogism to demonstrate that puns aren’t found in serious poetry like the Aeneid: “Vergil is a great poet. Puns are not the stuff of great poetry. Therefore Vergil cannot be using puns.” Except that Vergil seems to do…
Typically, wings in the Bible are appendages of birds (Genesis 1:21), so much so that “winged-thing” (substantive of kanaph ) becomes a synonym for bird (cf. Genesis 7:14; bird is ‘oph ). Bird wings are mentioned in the rite for the ascension offering from birds (Leviticus 1:17). The earth’s four…
Encyclopedic Isidore of Seville was one of the most widely-read early Christian writers. His analysis of ancient mythology in Etymologies summarized and extended a tradition that combined several components: Etymologies of the names of gods; euhemerist interpretation of myths as enhanced accounts of historical events; and moral indignation at the…
According Thomas Laqueur’s 2004 Solitary Sex , masturbation wasn’t a major concern in sexual ethics until fairly recently. Stephen Greenblatt summarized the argument in a 2004 review in the NYRB : “Medieval Christian theologians . . . did have a clear concept of masturbation as a sin, but it was…
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