Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Leo the Great's second sermon on the Ascension, Sermon 74 . I. The mystery of our salvation, dearly-beloved, which the Creator of the universe valued at the price of His blood, has now been carried out under conditions of humiliation from the day of His bodily birth to the end…
Life, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy says, is suffering, battle, pain, shock, failure, elation. Human beings are always torn, always riven. Much of human life, individually and collectively, is an effort to deal with suffering and death. By being the first Man, Jesus establishes the possibility of a different stance toward suffering and…
Is Christian baptism given to believers only or to believers and their children? That’s the question that must be answered—but only if you’re Baptist or Presbyterian. That’s how the question is framed between these two denominations in this dispute, and it’s along these lines the debate unfolds as each side…
Again and again the liturgy of St Chrysostom calls God a lover of mankind. He is Philanthropolos Theos (man-loving God), Kurios Philanthropolos (man-loving Lord), Philopsychos (lover of the soul). Philanthropy wasn’t a Christian invention. Roman benefactors gave benefits to subordinates. What was new was the shape of philanthropy, for the…
Perhaps the most fearful of all possibilities in the world is the possibility of betrayal on the part of someone who is in a “position of trust.” This, unfortunately, is the first block in what ought to be the foundation of every marriage in the world. Every woman has a…
It seems that denominationalism has had its day. A 2009 Barna survey found that denominational commitments have gone squishy in mainline Protestant churches, and Evangelicals don’t fare much better than the rest. After a similar survey, Ron Sellers of Ellison Research said that Protestants are as “loyal to their denominations…
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Iain Provan offers this comment in his Ecclesiastes commentary: “Modern people tend to view the movement of history, as far as human beings are concerned, as being from primeval swamp to divinity. The beginning was unpromising, but quite against expectation the forces of evolution have propelled us along, to a…
Ecclesiastes 12:1: Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. Solomon ends Ecclesiastes, as we have seen, emphasizing again the brevity of life. Life is vapor, all is vapor, a vapor of vapors, most vaporous, superlatively vaporous. Solomon makes it clear at the end of the book that…
Ecclesiastes 11:1: Cast your bread on the face of the waters, for you will find it after many days. We saw in this morning’s sermon Solomon’s image of casting bread on the water encourages a reckless faith, a willingness to act in spite of the risks. You don’t know whether…
What kind of guidance should we give our children? We often focus exclusively on all the things that they may not do. That is a perfectly sound approach, especially for younger children. After all, we worship and serve a God whose first words to newborn Israel were “Thou Shalt Not.”…
Francis Bacon offered this wise caution, “The human understanding is no dry light but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called ‘sciences as one would.’ For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes . . . . Numberless…
Some notes on Freud, mainly as background for discussion of Ernest Jones psycho-analytic treatment of Hamlet, largely based on Merold Westphal’s summary in Suspicion & Faith. FREUD AND SCIENCE Freud is an Enlightenment man who subverted the Enlightenment, an advocate of scientism whose theories rendered scientism impossible. He appears not…
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