Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Utopia is often accompanied by such adjectives as impossible, unrealistic, and impractical. In spite of that, it is not so hard to find some renowned people who actually maintain that is a very helpful and practical concept. Zygmunt Bauman ( Socialism: The Active Utopia ) argues that “utopian thinking belongs…
C. S. Lewis was no fan of the cinema. He once described himself as “rather allergic to films” and after attending one he added in a letter to a friend, “Do not worry it shall not become a habit.” But though he was quick to dismiss films, his fruitful discussion…
Noted Catholic patristic scholar, Robert Louis Wilken, delivered the second annual Nevin Lectures at Beeson Divinity School's Hodges Chapel last Friday and Saturday, February 20-21, 2015. Wilken, the Emeritus William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia, traced the influence of the writings…
I confess that I’m surprised by the number of Christians who are surprised by the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey . Many are simply bewildered by the buzz the movie has generated. They shouldn’t be. This is the world we live in. More precisely, this is the country we…
The newer perspective on justification by faith advocated in various studies in Pauline Theology by N.T. Wright and others, is now utterly relevant to our historical situation. Such work cannot be merely avant garde theologizing. In Luther’s day, everyone was “in” as regards the Church and the faith. We were…
Over the centuries, Christians have fasted for many reasons. Sometimes, the reasons have been good. The apostles and their churches fasted and prayed before selecting elders or ordaining missionaries. Christians have fasted in mourning for their sins. They have fasted and prayed to combat demons and to plead with God…
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Jan Swafford’s biography of Beethoven, Anguish and Triumph , recounts the composer’s physical ailments in squirm-inducing detail: “deafness, colitis, rheumatism, rheumatic fever, typhus, skin disorders, abscesses, a variety of infections, ophthalmia, inflammatory degeneration of the arteries, jaundice and at the end chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.” The NYTBR…
Death, Disability, and the Superhero (forthcoming) by Joe Alaniz is more jargon-ridden than the average cultural study, which is of course saying a lot. That’s unfortunate, because the topic is of some interest. Alaniz summarizes the psychoanalytic, religious, and other studies of the superhero phenomenon, pointing out the obvious that…
Karen Piper’s Price of Thirst is an expose of the global cabal of five companies that controls some 73% of the world’s private water supplies. Private companies provide an increasing proportion of water: “By 2025, the number of people served by private water companies is predicted to reach 21%. In…
In a typically dense, brilliant essay in the Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology , Milbank argues that without faith in resurrection there is no ethical. Resurrection is the extreme Christian form of the embrace of moral luck, the basis for a Christian eudaemonism. From this conclusion, Milbank teases out three…
In an insightful reflection on Derrida’s essay on the apocalyptic tone in philosophy, Walter Lowe ( Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Philosophy ) observes that “Kant has ruled appeals to immediacy to be out of order in the court of reason.” Derrida “inquires whether Kant himself can abide by this rule.…
Jesus promises that those who are thirsty can drink from Jesus. Those who drink/believe not only have their thirst assuaged. They become springs of refreshing, living water - John tells us the water is the Spirit (John 7:37-39). But living water is not only refreshing water. Most of the time,…
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