Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Hearing, Seeing, and History God is Word, not picture. He speaks, but He is not visible in Himself. Thus, God initiates history through language. He speaks the world into existence, and speaks to us to bring us out of formlessness and emptiness into the fullness of being His Bride. Similarly,…
The consensus of modern critical scholarship is that the book assigned to Isaiah was in fact composed by several different hands. "Deutero-Isaiah" supposedly begins with Isaiah 40:1. There are many good reasons for rejecting this conclusion. Among these, the narrative pattern of chapters 36-39 is a neglected piece of evidence.…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out throughout his many fascinating and occasionally quixotic writings and lectures that human life exists in four directions. These four directions are inward, outward, backward, and forward. In this article I want to explore these as they relate to the work of the Church. Each of…
14. Joseph and Judah Genesis 38 tells us about Judah’s sons and grandsons, and if we try to get these events into the time before the descent of the Hebrews into Goshen, it is very difficult to do so. But this passage is almost certainly dischronologized. Thematically Genesis 38 is…
From time to time I am asked what is good SF and fantasy that teenagers in Christian and home schools might enjoy. The following brief discussion is my answer that question. I’ve tried to point out authors and stories that are not widely known, and therefore have set aside G.…
"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awaken, some to life everlasting and others to disgrace, to contempt everlasting." This verse is often cited as proof that there was a belief in the resurrection of the body in the Old Testament times. In fact,…
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At least since the Reformation, the choices on the meaning of justification have been two: Either justification is a declaration of right standing or it’s a making-righteous (as in Bonaventure’s claim that the grace of justification purifies, illuminates, and perfects the soul). But are these the only alternatives? McGrath says…
NT Wright’s denial that justification is “entry language” is usually taken as a criticism of evangelical Protestant treatments of justification. But his denial cuts deeper: From the high middle ages, Roman Catholic theologians taught that justification was a motus from sin to grace. From Wright’s viewpoint, the Reformers agreed with…
Some of the summaries below were previously posted on my site, and are reproduced to help my students. 1) Derrida begins the book with a discussion of Jan Patocka’s treatment of the distinction between “enthusiasm” or the “demonic” and “responsibility.” The former “confuses the limits among the animal, the human,…
In his new Being with God , Aristotle Papanikolaou points to differences between Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas on the issue of divine energies. For Lossky, the doctrine of divine energies is designed to “protect the real character of communion with God” in theosis while also insisting that union with…
Thanks to my student Brent McLean for the following quotation from Schmemann’s Journals: “I reflect, while writing my Eucharist, about Communion, on the strange, mysterious alienation from it in the Church (on Mt. Athos - they didn’t regularly take Communion; in our churches, those who seek frequent Communion are held…
Stephen Jaeger’s wonderful Ennobling Love (1999) sets up some bizarre juxtapositions. On the one hand, here is Anselm of Bec writing to two novices about the join the monastic community: “My eyes eagerly long to see your face, most beloved; my arms stretch out to your embraces. My lips long…
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