Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I just finished re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday . I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one…
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be…
I was inspired to write this article after reading John Ahern’s The Case for Shorter Hymnals first published on Theopolis Institute’s website on November 16, 2021. Mr. Ahern and I are writing with different audiences and emphases in mind. I am thankful we both share a mutual desire to see…
If you’ve spent any time in the social-media galaxy of Christian cultural commentators, you have almost definitely run across the Latin phrase Imago Dei . It means image of God . Why they usually say it in Latin, I couldn’t tell you. We saw it in the wake of the…
The Gospel of Matthew—indeed, the New Testament—begins with a list of names, and that list of names is introduced by this heading: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Why start like this? Why “the son of David” and “the son…
A blade is raised. A child wails. But the brow under the crown is untroubled. Solomon knows that the raising of the sword will reveal the true parent and the identity of the son. But how did he know this? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac certainly bears some of the…
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Before Yahweh ever promises that Abraham’s seed through Sarah will multiply, He promises that to Ishmael (Genesis 16:10). The line goes from Adam to Noah to Ishmael; he is the first Abrahamic new Adam, before Abraham himself is described in these Adamic terms. This is further support for Paul’s allegory…
“A wild beast has killed him,” Jacob says of Joseph when he sees the bloody robe. Suffering, death, wild animals, a robe stripped off - it’s all back in Psalm 22: “Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They open wide their mouth at me,…
MacMullen thinks Constantine deserves the title Maximus , if only for the establishment of Constantinople. After summarizing its place in Europe and role in subsequent European history, he says, “As a founder, Constantine belongs in the company of Romulus and Alexander.”
Constantinople’s “birthday” occurred on May 11, 330. Most of the festivities took place in the newly built forum, at the center of which “stood a porphyry column bearing a gilt statue of the emperor. It held on its right hand the orb of world power. Inside the orb was a…
In 324, Constantine, then ruler of the Western Empire, went to war with his Eastern counterpart, Lincinius. Ramsay MacMullen describes it as having the “character of a crusade”: “For Constantine, the battle cry was not legitimacy, though indeed he was the senior Augustus and thought he now dusted off the…
Athanasius that the God of the Arians cannot create. If God is a maker, then “his creative Word” must be “proper to him” and not outside Him: “If, on the one hand, the willing [to create] belongs to him, and his will is productive and sufficient for constituting the things…
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