Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One common trope which is regularly invoked in current debates about the defensibility versus the danger of Christian engagement with critical theories (or, species of Critical Theory) is the idea of “ eating the meat but spitting out the bones .” Usually not far behind is a nod to the…
I am writing about the book of Proverbs in the Bible and “Eschatology.” I don’t refer only to the end of time, or “last things” that will happen in history before it ends as we know it. I am referring to all times of God’s judgment wherein He ends an…
“Unity” is the word of the day. In his inaugural address, Joe Biden invoked St. Augustine to inspire Americans to come together around certain shared values. As others have recently argued, Biden misreads Augustine in important ways. My argument here is that if we seek political unity and civic health…
This is part two of a series which began here ( The Half Shekel Temple Tax ) in which I answer back, hoping not to rebut but to glorify, some observations Peter Leithart made in a thought-provoking piece about the Temple Tax as atonement ( Atonement Money ). Adding economic…
It is now commonplace to characterize Wokeness (or “ Wokeism ”) as a religion , or at least religion-like . What I would like to explore is an elaboration on this emergent consensus, supplementing it with some theological analysis. Wokeness, I propose, is a form of post-Protestant neopaganism. It resembles…
Science Fiction movies often retell old stories and myths with greater impact for modern people. A being from another world or a technologically advanced human can embody an ancient god or demon and viewers are suddenly unwittingly enthralled by Ur tales that emerged from hundreds of years of human experience.…
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Jesus observes that Israel wanders like sheep without a shepherd, so He sends the Twelve to be shepherds to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In the next breath, He says that the Twelve go out as “sheep in the midst of wolves.” So which are they? Sheep…
“Be wise as serpents,” Jesus says. The first wise serpent in the Bible is a deceiver. Is Jesus encouraging His disciples to use deception to protect themselves? In part, the answer is a tentative Yes. Paul escaped the ethnarch Aretas in a basket let down through a window in the…
Martin Amis’s 2001 collection of criticism was entitled The War Against Cliche . Now he comes out with The Second Plane: September 11: 2001-2007 . According to Marjorie Perloff (in the TLS), it’s mostly cliche. There are religious cliches. Though the age of ideology in the last century was bad,…
Clever move by the McCain campaign: A scandalous piece in the NYT becomes an opportunity to rally the right to McCain’s side. The piece and the campaign’s well-organized and long-anticipated response puts the anti-McCain right into a bind: If they jump in against McCain, they’re in bed with Media Enemy…
Rahner says, “if the ordination [toward the supernatural] cannot be detached from nature, the fulfillment of the ordination from God’s point of view is exacted.” Reno explains, “this obligatory or necessary fulfillment violates the logic of love. There can be no ‘must’ of this sort in the relationship of self-giving.”…
This is fuzzy, but let me try to write toward clarity. The great problem for the nouvelle theologie , Rahner, and neo-scholasticism was to preserve the gratuity of grace. If man is created with an inbuilt orientation toward a supernatural fulfillment, then God cannot deny the supernatural fulfillment “without offending…
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