Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…
Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…
What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…
Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…
The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…
I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…
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Samuel tells Saul he will meet prophets coming down from a high place (from worship) playing instruments - harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre (1 Samuel 10:5). Each of these has a history; and the history of each is woven with Israel’s maturation as a people. Israel’s musical development tracks her…
9/11 pushed novelist Ian McEwan from unsettled agnosticism into atheism. Since that day, McEwan says, he has felt that “religion was distinctly unhelpful in making compassionate, reasonable judgments about people’s lives. On the whole, the secular mind seems far superior in making reasonable judgments.” That is an odd conclusion to…
An analysis from Stratfor Global Intelligence claims that the effort to re-establish medieval caliphates will run into several obstacles. The first has to do with internal divisions among radical Islamists themselves. Muslim nation-states are admittedly artificial, often weak, but still Islamists tend to group together along national lines: “Most Islamists,…
Three things stand out in Charles Lowry’s 1946 essay on The Trinity and Christian Devotion . The first is that the book exists at all, since it comes from a time when Trinitarian theology was supposed to be pretty much moribund. (Rahner’s book was published in 1970.) The second is…
Wanting to figure out what makes someone attractive on Tinder, Anne Helen Petersen created her own experimental knock-off and tested it on about 800 people. She reports her findings at buzzfeed.com . Petersen found that race was an important factor in attraction, as was religion. Even when religion was not…
When the Lamb opens the seven seal, there is silence in heaven for a half hour. There are several questions to ask about this silence. The first is, What is being silenced? Everything? It could be taken as total silence that lasts only from the time that the seventh seal…
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