Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When a certain Samaritan village refused Jesus’ attempt to visit, James and John asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven upon it. The allusion to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is evident, but, as the story shows, James’ and John’s thinking was entirely warped. Jesus rebuked…
In the first part of this essay, I considered paideia (formation)and mimesis (imitation) in the context of Aristotle’s virtue ethics and that of the New Testament. The overall concern is to realize how relevant is Aristotle’s ethics both to diagnosing our current malaise and to enculturing our children, though we…
In these posts I am inviting you into my philosophical reflection about integration , the absence of which we feel palpably in our fragmented world. My hope is for us to understand it more deeply, and to be ourselves reintegrated in the process. At this point in this extended inquiry…
It’s hard to imagine someone, centuries from now, mistaking our culture for a moral highpoint in the history of the West. Increasingly the news is dominated by school shootings, abusive policing, sexploitation of women, and increasing rates of suicide, addiction, and divorce. In response, the Left calls for regulations, surveillance,…
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” (Ps. 34:17-18) God is listening. He is listening when we ask Him for financial provision,…
The allusions to Mt. Sinai in the transfiguration story point to Jesus as a new Moses and even more as Yahweh, the God who met Moses and Elijah on the mountain. The fact that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah spoke of Jesus’ “exodus” suggests that the mountain of transfiguration was intended…
Showing page 86 of 309
Showing page 9 of 43
In The Second Shift (19), Arlie Hochschild points out that “the interplay between a man’s gender ideology and a woman’s implies a deeper interplay between his gratitude toward her, and hers toward him. For how a person wants to identify himself or herself influences what, in the back and forth…
Alexander Murray reviews Ronald Witt’s The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy in the TLS , and has some high compliments for this sequel to In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni . He commends, for example,…
John 4: Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. Jesus is never far from water. He turns water to wine, heals a paralytic at…
In many churches, the Sunday after Epiphany commemorates the baptism of Jesus. It is one of the moments when He shows Himself to the world. At the water, the Father declares Jesus to be His Son by giving the Spirit of sonship. When we were baptized, we received a share…
Prior to Cyril, McGuckin claims ( Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy , 224-5), Christian theology oscillated between an unstable “semitic” anthropology that understood human nature as a fragile, unstable combination of soul and flesh, and a philosophical “hellenistic” view that claimed that man was not truly anything…
John McGuckin dissents strongly from the notion that Cyril of Alexandria failed to do justice to the “full humanity” of Jesus ( Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy , 225-6). On the contrary, for Cyril, Jesus was the first fully human human. Denial that Cyril did justice to…
Showing page 815 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
