Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Leo the Great's second sermon on the Ascension, Sermon 74 . I. The mystery of our salvation, dearly-beloved, which the Creator of the universe valued at the price of His blood, has now been carried out under conditions of humiliation from the day of His bodily birth to the end…
Life, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy says, is suffering, battle, pain, shock, failure, elation. Human beings are always torn, always riven. Much of human life, individually and collectively, is an effort to deal with suffering and death. By being the first Man, Jesus establishes the possibility of a different stance toward suffering and…
Is Christian baptism given to believers only or to believers and their children? That’s the question that must be answered—but only if you’re Baptist or Presbyterian. That’s how the question is framed between these two denominations in this dispute, and it’s along these lines the debate unfolds as each side…
Again and again the liturgy of St Chrysostom calls God a lover of mankind. He is Philanthropolos Theos (man-loving God), Kurios Philanthropolos (man-loving Lord), Philopsychos (lover of the soul). Philanthropy wasn’t a Christian invention. Roman benefactors gave benefits to subordinates. What was new was the shape of philanthropy, for the…
Perhaps the most fearful of all possibilities in the world is the possibility of betrayal on the part of someone who is in a “position of trust.” This, unfortunately, is the first block in what ought to be the foundation of every marriage in the world. Every woman has a…
It seems that denominationalism has had its day. A 2009 Barna survey found that denominational commitments have gone squishy in mainline Protestant churches, and Evangelicals don’t fare much better than the rest. After a similar survey, Ron Sellers of Ellison Research said that Protestants are as “loyal to their denominations…
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Khaled Anatolios notes that Origen argued that “if God is eternally alighty, there must always be a creation over which God is sovereign.” Athanasius feels the force of the argument, but “transposes this line of reasoning to argue that if God is Creator, he must be eternally in possession of…
Those leading the assault on “classical theism” in recent decades has charged that the classical doctrine of God in Christian theology has reduced God to an impassive Stoic at best, and impersonal Substance at worst. Few can lay more direct claim to having founded “classical theism” than Athanasius, and yet…
In an extended discussion of the Christological import of Proverbs 8, Athanasius argues that the phrases “before the ages” and “before the mountains were set in place” refer to God’s preparation of the economy of grace: “Being himself good and the lover of humanity, he prepared beforehand the economy of…
Athanasius opposed to extrinicism in every form. Most obviously, he opposes the Arian effort to make the Son external to the Father and to the being of God. But that intrinsicism unfolds in an intrinsicist, christologically grounded soteriology. Why couldn’t God have sent a creature to save us? he presents…
In a proto-Wittgensteinian vein, Hamann wrote to Jacobi: “Metaphysics has its own school and court languages . . . and I am incapable of either understanding or making use of them. Hence I am close to suspecting that the whole of our philosophy consists more of language than of reason,…
In the Berlin-doesn’t-get-Hamann department, there’s also Berlin’s claim that for Hamann “existence logically precedes reason” and “there exists a pre-rational reality.” Not exactly. The world is there before we start reflecting on it; it’s got to be there for us to reflect on it. But for Hamann the real is…
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