Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must…
Matthew is organized around 5 discourses, which trace out the history of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of God and Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus first speaks as a new Moses, instructing His disciples on a mountain about a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes…
The fall of the Sethites in Genesis 6 is the third fall of mankind, or the third degree of Adam’s original fall. Adam sinned in a Garden against his Father by stealing something he was supposed to wait to obtain. (“Every tree shall be food for you” Genesis 1:29.) Cain…
The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. Doug argues for angels,…
The prophecy of Jude concerns apostasy. An illustration of apostasy and its consequences is found in verse 6, which the New American Standard Bible translates this way: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for…
At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn't say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,”…
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Zizek ( The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? ) thinks that John Caputo and Giorgio Agamben are right to say that Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God could only turn inside out. According to them ( After the Death of God ), “if there’s no overarching principle, that…
In his effort to “think with” Carl Schmitt ( Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty ), Paul Kahn uses a “sacrificial” conception of sovereignty to isolate differences between America and Europe, and between pre-modern and modern states. America v. Europe first (16-17): “To the question of…
Bauman ( Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age , 144-5) gives several examples of how the pressure of research and military planning lead to atrocities. One occurred in the German town of Wurzburg in March 1945, “when Nazi Germany was already on its knees and the speedy end…
In his Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age , Zygmunt Bauman refers to the work of Gunther Anders on the “Nagasaki syndrome,” which Anders warned carried “the fully and truly apocalyptic potential of ‘globicide.’” The Nagasaki syndrom “means that ‘what has been done once can be repeated over…
Some punishments, Thomas says ( ST , I-II, 87), are punishments strictly speaking, some are satisfactory, some are medicinal. Punishment strictly speaking is the repression of order that retaliates against an offense committed against the order (art. 1). A violation of man’s own order of reason is punished by remorse…
James Jordan has pointed out that the book of Revelation gives us seven names for Satan: Wormwood (8:10-11), the poisoner of wells; Abaddon and Apollyon (9:11), both of which mean “destroyer” but which speak of destruction of Hebrew and Greek worlds respectively; Dragon (12:1), devourer of children; Serpent (12:9, 15),…
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