Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I just finished re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday . I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one…
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be…
I was inspired to write this article after reading John Ahern’s The Case for Shorter Hymnals first published on Theopolis Institute’s website on November 16, 2021. Mr. Ahern and I are writing with different audiences and emphases in mind. I am thankful we both share a mutual desire to see…
If you’ve spent any time in the social-media galaxy of Christian cultural commentators, you have almost definitely run across the Latin phrase Imago Dei . It means image of God . Why they usually say it in Latin, I couldn’t tell you. We saw it in the wake of the…
The Gospel of Matthew—indeed, the New Testament—begins with a list of names, and that list of names is introduced by this heading: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Why start like this? Why “the son of David” and “the son…
A blade is raised. A child wails. But the brow under the crown is untroubled. Solomon knows that the raising of the sword will reveal the true parent and the identity of the son. But how did he know this? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac certainly bears some of the…
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In his 2013 book, Saving Face , Stephen Pattison observes that infants very quickly begin to notice and recognize faces, and to imitate the expressions they see. “To be and to become human socially and emotionally,” he writes, “is to engage in real, nuanced, face-to-face visual relations.” When a child…
Between 1900 and 1960, scholars believed that Plato held to a “cosmological” view of the divine, the notion that gods are “personified forces responsible for bringing order to the sensible world.” Since then, scholars have adopted a “metaphysical” interpretation, arguing that Plato's god is finally a metaphysical principle. So argues…
Ryan Leif Hansen ( Silence and Praise ) describes Roman imperial religion as a social contract that bound the gods, the emperor, and the Roman people in a stable, peaceful order: “ Cultic ritual, sacrifice, and the related economic exchange were integral for sustaining the order of the cosmos ,…
Sara Japhet ( I and II Chronicles ) notes the “unusual” structure of the etiological story behind the name “Jabez” in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Typically, “an aetiology offers an explanation for a given datum (commonly, but not always, a name) by recounting the causes from which it arose and demonstrating…
In his powerful manifesto, Nation of Bastards , Douglas Farrow argues that the Kulturkampf in which we find ourselves began in the early part of the 20th century with “the promotion of sterilization, eugenics, and the contraceptive mentality.” In short, it started “as an attack on children,” more horrifically in…
In his reflections on Carl Schmitt, Paul W. Kahn ( Political Theology ) contrasts Enlightenment political rationalism to Schmitt's political voluntarism. Kant stands as the representative of the rationalist tradition: “For Kant, the question of freedom was that of how a subject could determine his own action in a causally…
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