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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A trio of authors argue in the January 2004 issue of American Philosophical Quarterly that conscious desires are impossible. They begin with a distinction between beliefs and desires, showing that the difference has to do with the “direction of fit” with the external world. Beliefs (and perceptions) arise from the…
In American Jesus , Stephen Prothero traces a three-stage process that produced a uniquely American Jesus. First, Jesus was detached, through the awakenings of the nineteenth century, from the creedal and confessional Calvinism of Puritan America; then, scholars disentangled Jesus from the biblical witness, basing their faith supposedly on Jesus…
From Eugene Vinaver, on the development of Romance literature in the high middle ages: In the third quarter of the twelfth century, some ten or fifteen years after the disaster of the Second Crusade, a remarkable event occurred on the European literary scene . . . . A series of…
In the late twelfth century, the English writer Nigel Wireker produced the Speculum Stultorum , the ?Mirror of Dunces.?EIn this story, an ass, Brunellus, dissatisfied with his short tail, leaves home to visit the famous physician Galen to get a prescription for a longer tail. Galen sends him to Salerno,…
There’s a neat little chiasm in Luke 21:25-26: A. Signs in sun, moon stars B. on earth dismay among nations C. in perplexity at roaring of the sea and waves B. men fainting with fear and expectations of things coming upon the oikoumene A. powers of heavens shaken. A couple…
In this parable, Jesus tells the story of Israel using the image of the vineyard. As we saw, this was not an invention of Jesus, but goes back to Psalms and Prophets who used the vineyard as an image of Israel. In these verses Jesus says that the vineyard is…
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