Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One common trope which is regularly invoked in current debates about the defensibility versus the danger of Christian engagement with critical theories (or, species of Critical Theory) is the idea of “ eating the meat but spitting out the bones .” Usually not far behind is a nod to the…
I am writing about the book of Proverbs in the Bible and “Eschatology.” I don’t refer only to the end of time, or “last things” that will happen in history before it ends as we know it. I am referring to all times of God’s judgment wherein He ends an…
“Unity” is the word of the day. In his inaugural address, Joe Biden invoked St. Augustine to inspire Americans to come together around certain shared values. As others have recently argued, Biden misreads Augustine in important ways. My argument here is that if we seek political unity and civic health…
This is part two of a series which began here ( The Half Shekel Temple Tax ) in which I answer back, hoping not to rebut but to glorify, some observations Peter Leithart made in a thought-provoking piece about the Temple Tax as atonement ( Atonement Money ). Adding economic…
It is now commonplace to characterize Wokeness (or “ Wokeism ”) as a religion , or at least religion-like . What I would like to explore is an elaboration on this emergent consensus, supplementing it with some theological analysis. Wokeness, I propose, is a form of post-Protestant neopaganism. It resembles…
Science Fiction movies often retell old stories and myths with greater impact for modern people. A being from another world or a technologically advanced human can embody an ancient god or demon and viewers are suddenly unwittingly enthralled by Ur tales that emerged from hundreds of years of human experience.…
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Deuteronomy 6 is the closest thing the Old Testament has to a confession of faith: “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh your God, Yahweh is one” (v. 4). That isn't merely a “doctrinal” confession. The text immediately goes on to exhort those who confess the one God to love that one God…
The land of promise is not a land like Egypt, and when Moses describes the differences between them he focuses on hydraulics. Egypt draws its water from below, pumped with a foot pump from the Nile. Canaan, though, lives off heavenly rain, the waters above, water that comes from Yahweh…
It would seem that a major schism would so weaken the church that it would be ill-suited to major expansion and growth. So it might seem. In his contribution to Sacred Schisms , however, Joseph Bryant argues that the third-century schism between the Catholic and Katharoi factions actually facilitated the…
Moses is typically depicted in modern scholarship as a prophet. There is reason for that, but in his monograph on Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses , Danny Mathews argues that the Pentateuch surrounds Moses with various royal symbolisms as well. He points to Deuteronomy 33:4-5, “Moses charged…
When Franco Basaglia took over the Gorizia asylum in 1961, it reminded him of his time in a fascist prison back in 1944. The stench of death and shit was overwhelming, and it made Basaglia physically ill. According to John Foot's The Man Who Closed the Asylums , it was…
Marilynne Robinson has some sobering things to say about Christianity, America, and fear. She starts from the premise, by no means universally accepted in the world of the New York Review of Books , that “America is a Christian country.” From this she formulates a two-part thesis: “first, contemporary America…
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