Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What is below is fairly self-explanatory. This is an exchange I had with a local liberal clergyman on the subject of abortion. The circumstances of the debate are included in the text itself. I initially e-mailed this out to a list of clergy in our city after a local (and…
The seemingly humdrum parts of the Bible often hide overlooked wisdom. Take, for example, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories aren't exactly the most gripping or memorable. They are far less concrete than, say, the story of the Exodus. No one in Ezra is stricken blind or devoured…
For most of the past century, philosophical perspectives on life in the western world have been overtly grim and pessimistic. The optimism of the Enlightenment, generated by confidence in the scientific method and the potential of an increasingly civilized humanity to redress the evils of the world, was shattered by…
Chiastic structures are found all over the Bible, and in recent decades commentators have become more adept at spotting them. But identifying these literary structures is only part of the challenge. There remains the challenge of understanding what they mean. Part of the answer is found in the recognition that…
Part 1 can be found HERE . Clearly, more than just getting worship right is important in changing the world, but since worship is the central act of God’s people, performed on the first day of the week at the center of the world before the very face of God,…
“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” ( Luke 11:27 ) Arguing for Christian morality in a secular society is difficult. A culture which accepts evolutionary dogma has no intellectual place — or inherent desire — for absolute morality, since it believes morality…
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Section 1.18 Cur Deus Homo contains a strange, very medieval digression on the question of whether the number of elect human beings is equal to, less, or greater than the number of fallen angels, and whether God created humans to make up the number of fallen angels. Through a series…
Anselm ( Cur Deus Homo , 1.18) offers this lovely description of the consummation of all things. Creation consists on the one hand of the blessed city that is being built and brought to consummation. Physical creation is also destined to be renewed into something better ( in melius renovandam…
God’s honor cannot be diminished or increased in itself, but when human beings refuse to honor and obey Him, Anselm says ( Cur Deus Homo , 1.15), they dishonor God in relation to themselves. In so far as they are able, the disobedient disturb the “order and beauty of the…
Jacob Taubes - part historian, part philosopher, mostly stand-up comedian - gives this hilarious anecdote to illustrate how Paul conquered the European imagination ( The Political Theology of Paul (Cultural Memory in the Present) , 41): “I have a very good friend - now he’s a bishop in Stockholm, he…
At the outset of Cur Deus Homo? Anselm cannot pull himself away from the beauty of the atonement. To say God humbled himself is not unsuitable ( convenire ) and makes no injury to God. It is perfectly appropriate, as evident from the symmetry of fall and redemption: Death enters…
For a sophisticated theologian, Conor Cunningham’s arguments ( Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong ) against a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 are remarkably thin. He follows what he describes as a “sophisticated” patristic hermeneutics, and adds “After all, if the first two chapters…
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