Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…
Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…
What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…
Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…
The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…
I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…
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Wallace again on Timon of Athens . Wallace argues that Shakespeare has written a play to explore Seneca’s society of benefits and gratitude, and shows that the classical model of social order is impossible: “the cast would appear to have been designed to test the Senecan hypothesis about the nature…
Wallace again on Timon of Athens . Wallace argues that Shakespeare has written a play to explore Seneca’s society of benefits and gratitude, and shows that the classical model of social order is impossible: “the cast would appear to have been designed to test the Senecan hypothesis about the nature…
Wallace again on Seneca in Shakespeare: “The first separat e publication of De Benficiis in an English translation was Nicholas Haward’s The Line of Liberalitie in 1569, which included only the first three books, but William Baldwin’s popular Treatise of Morall Philosophie had appeared in 1547 and contained one chapter…
In a 1986 article in Modern Philology , John Wallace argues that Timon of Athens is “Shakespeare’s Senecan Study,” reflecting on the issues raised by Seneca’s de Beneficiis : “Shakespeare must have been thinking of Seneca, but a safer argument could have been constructed on the premise that Shakespeare was…
Paul Cantor describes three of Shakespeare’s Roman plays as a trilogy, moving from the Republic ( Coriolanus ) to the early empire ( Julius Caesar ) to the decadence of Octavian ( Antony and Cleopatra ). Together they form “a kind of historical trilogy, dramatizing the rise and fall of…
In her Leviticus as Literature , the late Mary Douglas offers some interesting possibilities for interpreting the prohibition of eating fat and for the arrangement of animal portions on the altar. Her interpretation is guided by her recognition of analogies between Sinai, the tabernacle, and the body, both of the…
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