Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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From the Renaissance to the early twentieth century, “almost all painting had obeyed a convention: that of one-point perspective,” says Robert Hughes ( The Shock of the New , 16-7). Renaissance perspective has come to seem natural, just the way we actually see, but Hughes points out that it is…
Jody Bottum nicely captures the unclassifiability of the new Pope: “He is an advocate of the poor who has consistently opposed the Argentinian government’s ostensible programs for the poor. A social activist who rejects most social reform. A churchman who refused many of the elaborate trappings of his office while…
The second installment of Pastor Ralph Smith’s series of studies in Deuteronomy is up on the Trinity House site this morning.
What other institution on the planet produces as many impressive old men as the Catholic church? Francis is 76. Joseph Ratzinger was nearly 80 when he became Benedict XVI. Not yet 60, John Paul II was a kid when he started the second-longest Papacy in history, but he was 85…
Even the inattentive see that Jesus’ ministry focused on what He described as the coming of the “reign of God.” In his recently republished The Aims of Jesus , Ben F. Meyer puts some concreteness to that by emphasizing “that the reign of God as imminent meant the imminent restoration…
In his contribution to The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature , Joseph Wittreich examines the apocalyptic elements of King Lear . Shakespeare doesn’t hold, he thinks, to traditionally Christian views of the end, nor does he want to turn the apocalyptic framework into a fixed law of history.…
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