Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Where do we go from here? Depending on one’s perspective, the American story can plausibly be interpreted in different ways. Looked at from past to present , we can see a great deal of continuity from medieval Christendom and the Reformation to America’s founding. The War for Independence, after all,…
Click HERE for Part 1 Civic Religion: American or Christian? We have already traced out the basic contours of the shift in America from an ecclesiocentric, theocratic social order to a secular one. Building on Locke and Hobbes, the Enlightenment accomplished an astonishing coup of Christendom. That victory for the…
Author’s Introductory Note: Engaging in broad historical interpretation as I am about to do is always risky. Necessarily, one “stylizes” history by simplifying, over generalizing, and stereotyping. But the narrative qualities of history are not simply due to the imposition of human rationality upon brute facts; rather history is always…
A. Repentance to life involves endeavoring to believe real hard that you’re saved. reject infant baptism. stop watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. walk with God in all the ways of his commandments. B. What is necessary so that no sinner may expect to be forgiven unless he does it? Only…
The machine works mechanically and it is flawless. Slander/libel a group of Presbyterian ministers as “Romanist” because robes and James 2 are no worse than praying to Mary or relying on purgatory to pay for unconfessed sins. Drive off anyone who disagrees. Of that number, there may be a tiny…
If we take as a starting point the Tribal / Monarchical / Empire model, we can then add to it the Late Empire Phase. The particular ‘marker sin’ of Empire is false intermarriage, which signifies pluralism and syncretism. Empires by definition are “cosmopolitan” dominated by cities, high culture, many cultures,…
Showing page 212 of 309
Showing page 8 of 43
At the beginning of her discussion of Christian architecture in the Renaissance and Reformation, Jeanne Kilde ( Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture and Worship ) writes: “In the Renaissance period, the medieval notion of the church as the City of Heaven yielded to new ideas about…
John Paul II’s meditations on creation as gift in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body (180-1) are deeply stimulating. He begins from the observation that the gift of creation is a “radical” gift, that is, a gift that constitutes the recipient in the giving, “an…
In Piers the Plowman (9), William Langland recounts the story of the sons of God and the daughters of men. Though he extrapolates from the text, he gets the story right (I am quoting from the Penguin Classics edition, Piers the Ploughman (Penguin Classics) ): “All Cain’s progeny came to…
Hyde ( The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property , 50-51) distinguishes between “work” and “labor.” The first is what we do by the hour. Labor has its own pace, and there is no timetable or tool to make it work more efficiency: “Writing a poem, developing a…
Lewis Hyde has some wonderful reflections on the “labor of gratitude” in his The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (47-51): With “transformative gifts,” the recipient of the gift “feels gratitude. I would like to speak of gratitude as a labor undertaken by the soul to effect the…
Godbout ( The World of the Gift , 209-10) gives this searing critique of Girard. For Girard, he says, “violence is primary . . . no love is possible. There are only hatred and ‘desire.’” Girard’s own analysis undercuts his theory: “In his discussion of the judgment of Solomon, Girard…
Showing page 892 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
