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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Astral imagery

The Lady and Her Jewels: An Epiphany Meditation

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery (Revelation 12:1-2). Then Joshua spoke…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 6, 2015
extreme-unction
Anointing

Fattening Our Suffering

In his post asking Ought we Anoint the Dying? Peter Leithart makes an excellent and important point about our suffering as members of Christ. However, he only parenthetically mentions that the verb in question in James 5 is not chrio but aleipho . By assuming that these words are interchangeable,…

by Robert MaddoxDecember 30, 2014
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James

Death as Frenemy

We spend a lot of time in the church talking about what it means to live like a Christian. But what does it mean to die like a Christian? If we are to follow Christ in life, what does it mean for us to follow him in death as well?…

by Rich LuskDecember 23, 2014
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Literature

Was Shakespeare A Christian?

How would one go about answering the question posed by my title? That depends on what the question means. Obviously, different definitions of the question would require different approaches to an answer. Right off hand, I can think of at least three possible — though not necessarily mutually exclusive —…

by Ralph Allan SmithDecember 23, 2014
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American Culture

Phobophobia

In recent weeks and months, we have seen events that are not the event. The drama around these events is not the events themselves, but the anxiety about the events, and then even the anxiety about the anxiety about the events. That is the real event. The events in Ferguson,…

by Richard BledsoeDecember 22, 2014
anointing-david
Anointing

Ought We Anoint the Dying?

Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that…

by Peter LeithartDecember 18, 2014

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God’s telos

Athanasius insists that the Father must have an eternal Son because the Father’s essence could never have been imperfect: “if He is called the eternal offspring of the Father, He is rightly so called. For never was the essence of the Father imperfect ( ateles ), that what is proper to it should…

November 4, 2009
Literature

Lying

From Richard Wilbur’s “Lying”: In the strict sense, of course, We invent nothing, merely bearing witness To what each morning brings again to light: Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law Spins on the grill-end of the diner’s roof, Then grass and grackles or, at the…

November 4, 2009

Canon Sale

Canon Press is having a Fall Sale, which you can read about here: http://www.canonpress.com/shop/

November 4, 2009

Conundrums of Simplicity, 2

Perhaps the most obvious and easiest resolution of the conundrums that Augustine explores is a perichoretic one. Does the Father have wisdom “in Himself”? Yes, because the Wisdom that is the Son dwells in Him  by the Spirit.  Does the Father possess His being “in Himself”?  Yes, because the Son…

November 3, 2009

Conundrums of Simplicity

1 Corinthians 1:24 says that Christ is the power and wisdom of God.  Augustine spends two books of de Trinitate trying to figure out what that means.  In Book 6, he tries out the notion that the Father’s power and wisdom is simply the power and wisdom that He begets…

November 3, 2009

Liquid identity

Augustine argues ( de Trinitate 5.1.6) that claims about human beins are spoken either secundum substantiam or secundum accidens .  The latter category includes relational terms, statements about us ad aliquid , with reference to another.  That is, for humans, in contrast to God, relational terms are accidents, changeable.  God…

November 3, 2009

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