Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In The Meaning of History , Nikolai Berdyaev argues that the ancient Greeks had no concept of history and no philosophy of history because their concept of God and the world did not allow for it. “They conceived the world aesthetically, as a finite and harmonious cosmos. The most representative…
You know how the curtain parts at the beginning of a play, and you see a new scene, with characters and sets and incidents that had remained hidden up til then? Church last week was like that. Except the curtain was made up of all the things I thought were…
Genesis 3 records the terrible day when humanity fell into sin and shalom was violated. This was a moment of cosmic treason, when Adam and Eve violated their relationship with God by rebelling against His command and fell into the severe ignobility we all experience. The entrance of sin wrecked…
One of the most important contributions of twentieth-century Catholic nouvelle théologie , and of Henri de Lubac and Jean Danielou in particular, was its rehabilitation of the typological interpretation of the Bible practiced by patristic and medieval theologians. Typological interpretation assumes that events and institutions of the Old Testament present…
The Catholic News Service has reported that Pope Francis has called for the abolition of not only the death penalty, but also of life in prison. In a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law, the pontiff called for all “Christians and people of good will” to…
Each year, the United Nations designates November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon explains, “Violence against women and girls takes many forms and is widespread throughout the globe. It includes rape, domestic violence, harassment at work, abuse in school, female…
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An English visitor to the Netherlands in the 1650s, Owen Felltham, remarked that the Dutch were “in some sort Gods, for they set bounds to teh Sea; and when they list let it pass them. Even their dwellings is a miracle. They live lower than the fishes. In the very…
Richard Popkin ( The History of Scepticism ) writes of a crisis of skepticism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: “With the rediscovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of writings of the Greek Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus, the arguments and views of the Greek sceptics became part of the philosophical…
Erasmus and Luther eventually squared off regarding the freedom of the will, but in earlier letters Erasmus cautions against judging Luther too hastily or harshly and pushes the burden of proof on Luther’s opponents. Erasmus was, after all, a reforming Catholic. For instance: “I do not suppose myself learned enough…
Isaiah tells Israel to prepare for the coming of Yahweh by leveling mountains and raising valleys (40:3-5), and when Yahweh comes the mountains melt away (Psalm 97:5; Micah 1:4). But the angel of Yahweh tells Zechariah that the mountains will give way to Zerubabbel (Zechariah 4:7), a true son of…
A couple of notes on the first vision of Zechariah 5, and then translation. 1) Verse 3 is difficult to translate, and is somewhat surprising. The scroll represents, the angel says, the curse going throughout the land, but the effect of the curse in verse 3 is not negative and…
Some notes on Zechariah 4, with a rough translation following. 1) Structurally, the passage is most clearly organized around the exchanges between the interpreting angel and Zechariah. Most obvious is the parallel between verses 4-5 and 11-13; together with the angel’s response, these questions form a frame around a central…
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