Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
First, I love my Christmas songs. This is how I think of it: the season of Advent gets in the way of singing what I want to sing. How can you not listen to Nat King Cole in December? Or Bing Crosby, Harry Connick Jr., and Amy Grant? Even though…
Introduction Imagine the stereotypical American grandparents. Once you have the outline, start filling in the details. What picture emerges? Maybe something like what Ogden Nash said, “When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.” Or maybe the oft-repeated assertion that it’s the grandparent’s job description “to spoil the…
Hundreds of generations of ancient Israelites grew up as children of Abraham, inheritors of the covenant—the promises of God. These promises were more than nice bumper stickers or framed photos to cover empty space in their homes–these promises were at the heart of their very identity–individually and collectively. Genesis “I…
Aliens and Sojourners When the question “Is there life on other planets?” is asked, even the best theologians can only reply, “The Bible doesn’t tell us.” Well, in truth, the Bible does tell us, but only if we are paying attention. …and there was not a man to till the…
John runs a theme throughout his gospel that bubbles under the surface—Jesus is searching for, and finding, a wife. John launches into the narrative proper with a statement of where he’s going. “On the third day there was a wedding” (John 2.1) is about as good an example of flash…
I have come to believe that a great many people are almost too weak to repent in any very open way. There must first be some level of healing. In some cases, including biblical ones, there is not even any evidence of faith on the part of the recipients of…
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According to Pickstock, Augustine’s musical ontology is not a mere subordination of space to time, or a univocal “Dionysian flow”: “just as important as the priority of time, for Augustine, is the insistence on articulation into distinct musical units or phrases, the very move which allows a stress upon the simultaneity…
Nothing comes from nothing.  That seems obvious, and Christians have traditionally had some difficulty explaining why creatio ex nihilo is a defensible violation of that basic principle. According to Catherine Pickstock, Augustine viewed creation ex nihilo as the most rational position.  All around us, “things are continuously coming to be…
In responding to Milbank’s analysis of Augustine on the secular, RA Markus ( Christianity And the Secular (Blessed Pope John XXIII Lecture Series in Theology and Culture) ) borrows MJ Hollerich’s summary of Milbank that there is no “neutral public sphere in which people can act politically without reference to…
Jean-Marie Schaeffer ( Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger (New French Thought Series) has a blast pointing out the contradictions in Kant’s aesthetics. Most of them arise from Kant’s insistence that the judgment of taste is founded on “the form of a finality” that…
Can effects double as causes? Kant, still working with some form of final causality, thinks so: There are cases when “the thing that for the moment is designated effect deserves none the less, if we take the series regressively, to be called the cause of the thing of which it…
Evidence that Hamann had Kant right: In explaining taste as a common sense, he notes that this common sense of beauty can be arrived at by a process of stripping off whatever belongs to our perception and prejudice. That is, we put “ourselves in the position of every one else,…
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