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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First Things has put up an article of mine on prophecy on their web site:http://www.firstthings.com.
Challenging a “solitarist” view of identity, Amartya Sen ( Identity and Violence ) writes, “The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist,…
Jordan also cites an article from Hector Avalos arguing that the repetition of the lists of musical instruments and Babylonian officials in Daniel 3 is intended satirically. Avalos writes: “[Henri] Bergson argued that simple mechanical iteration is a great source of comedy. When humans act as automatons or in an…
Jim Jordan points out that Daniel 3 lists seven ranks of Nebuchadnezzar’s officers, and also seven kinds of musical instruments. The numerical link perhaps points to a connection of musical and political performance, musical and political “orchestration.” Further, the word for “mighty man” (the Aramaic equivalent of gibbor ) is…
Bill Bryson’s recent Shakespeare bio begins with some delightful descriptions of extant portraits of the bard. The Droeshout engraving, Bryson writes, “is an arrestingly - we might almost say magnificently - mediocre piece of work. Nearly everything about it is flawed. One eye is bigger than the other. The mouth…
William Alston challenges Trinitarian critics of substance metaphysics, arguing that they have misrepresented classical notions of substance: “there is absolutely no justification for saddling substance metaphysics as such with these commitments to timelessness, immutability, pure actuality with no potentiality, and being unaffected by relations to other beings. To see this,…
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