Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In The Meaning of History , Nikolai Berdyaev argues that the ancient Greeks had no concept of history and no philosophy of history because their concept of God and the world did not allow for it. “They conceived the world aesthetically, as a finite and harmonious cosmos. The most representative…
You know how the curtain parts at the beginning of a play, and you see a new scene, with characters and sets and incidents that had remained hidden up til then? Church last week was like that. Except the curtain was made up of all the things I thought were…
Genesis 3 records the terrible day when humanity fell into sin and shalom was violated. This was a moment of cosmic treason, when Adam and Eve violated their relationship with God by rebelling against His command and fell into the severe ignobility we all experience. The entrance of sin wrecked…
One of the most important contributions of twentieth-century Catholic nouvelle théologie , and of Henri de Lubac and Jean Danielou in particular, was its rehabilitation of the typological interpretation of the Bible practiced by patristic and medieval theologians. Typological interpretation assumes that events and institutions of the Old Testament present…
The Catholic News Service has reported that Pope Francis has called for the abolition of not only the death penalty, but also of life in prison. In a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law, the pontiff called for all “Christians and people of good will” to…
Each year, the United Nations designates November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon explains, “Violence against women and girls takes many forms and is widespread throughout the globe. It includes rape, domestic violence, harassment at work, abuse in school, female…
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Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1914 (1983/2003) is an enormously rewarding book. A few highlights. In his introduction, Kern carefully examines how technological and cultural developments interacted during his time period. He eschews “technological determinism in cultural history” in favor of a nuanced spectrum of interactions. At…
Adam describes how modern efforts at time-control have undermined time-control: “For clock time to exist and thus to be measurable and controllable there has to be duration, an interval between two points in time. Without duration there is no before and after, no cause and effect, no stretch of time…
Virilio notes that (in Adam’s summary) “through the ages, the wealth and power associated with ownership of land was equally tied to the capacity to traverse it and to the speed at which this could be achieved.” A lord of vast holdings without horses to defend its distant borders won’t…
Paul Virilio observes that time “compression” (a Marxist term, referring to speeding-up of economic and other social processes) has unintended and counter-intentional consequences. Adam summarizes: “while cars, planes and trains had become progressively aster, the time spent in transit had not been compressed at an equal rate. Standstill and traffic…
Barbara Adam ( Time ) remarks, “In medieval Europe the Church as God’s representative on earth was the keeper and guardian of time. Not even the sovereign had jurisdiction over it. The sovereign had the monopoly over weights and measures; the churches were in charge of time in all its…
We can’t not talk about Jesus. He is the Word, the Living Word behind, in with and under, all our words. Whatever we try to articulate, and do articulate, with truth, is about the One in whom all things hold together. Whenever we speak falsely, we are speaking against the…
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