Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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Aesthetic consciousness - the capacity to abstract the aesthetic component in all perception, so as to view everything “aesthetically” - also implies, Gadamer argues, a particular notion of simultaneity. Because it abstracts the aesthetic value of the work, and downplays or ignores all other aspects of an aesthetic object, the…
After Kant, and especially after Kant’s romantic disciples, art came to be viewed as a matter of beautiful appearance, consciously defined in contrast to practical reality. This had not always been the Western conception of art. Gadamer comments, “Traditionally the purpose of ‘art,’ which also includes all conscious transformation of…
In 1439, representatives of Eastern and Western churches met in Florence to heal the schism of 1054. An agreement was reached, but it remained a paper agreement only. But the event had enormous consequences for the future of the Western world. Because of the good will this ecumenical meeting produced,…
Still on Rosenstock-Huessy: “How could we enjoy a restful sleep without social peace? The Gestapo in many countries changes man back to the deer whose sleep is perfunctory and scanty.” No political theory, or sociology, can be complete if it does not “include those who must wake when we are…
Rosenstock-Huessy cites Josiah Royce’s The Philosophy of Loyalty as an example of a reductive view of human life. Royce rightly emphasizes the importance of loyalty, but then “could not resist the temptation to explain everything in terms of this one power which essentially binds us to the past.” But the…
Rosenstock-Huessy again: He writes that Christian conversion always involves a break with an old way of life, a breach with old loyalties and commitments, and a “verification” of that experience by an induction into a new people, “formerly overlooked or even despised, who now enable us to strengthen experience into…
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