Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…
“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…
Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…
Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…
In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…
I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…
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1) Methodologically, Mauss is particularly interested in investigating what he calls the “total social fact,” a social reality that gives expression to all sorts of institutions simultaneously. Gift-exchange events such as the potlatch are “religious, juridical, and moral” and “relate to both politics and the family”; they are “economic” events…
There is a wonderful scene in Evelyn Waugh’s Unconditional Surrender where the English Gen. Ritchie-Hooke attacks a German garrison in broad daylight, virtually alone. The Germans are left scratching their heads: “The single-handed attack on a fortified position by a British major-general, attended in one account by a small boy,…
In The Republic 588d, Plato writes, “words are a more plastic material than wax.” We can construct any manner of phantasmagorical creature in words, but think of how inept any pictorial depiction of Revelation appears, or how bizarre a portrait based on the Song of Songs would be. (Jonathan McIntosh…
A couple of weeks back, TNR published a lengthy review of Richard Neuhaus’ latest book that expanded into a warning about the danger that Neuhaus and his fellow theocons pose to American democracy. John Wilson has a lively rebuttal to the TNR piece in the current issue of Books &…
John Webster (in an essay in Volf and Welker, God’s Life in Trinity ) prefers the term “fellowship” to “communion” in describing the way creatures participate in the perfect life of God: “God communicates his absolute life. This communication does not mean that creatures participate in the life that is…
INTRODUCTION If “gift” has become a major category of recent thought, it is largely because of the influence of anthropology. Marcel Mauss’ The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies is the single most important work in this regard, and we’ll spend some time examining Mauss’ work…
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