Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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Republicans are changing their minds on same-sex marriage, but, according to NRO’s Daniel Foster , in more complicated ways than might appear. Some raw numbers to start: “opposition to same-sex marriage is increasingly tenuous, particularly along two axes. First, self-described tea-party Republicans oppose gay marriage 84/13, while Republicans who describe…
Rev. Richard Bledsoe explores the pastoral and social implications of the story of the Gadarene demoniac over at the Trinity House web site.
In her little classic On Violence , Hannah Arendt quotes two complaints against the injustice of time. Alexander Herzen: “Human development is a form of chronological injustice, since late-comers are able to profit by the labors of their predecessors without paying the same price.” And Kant: “it will always remain…
Like all medievals, like all scholastics, Thomas asks unusual questions. Nearly always they are odd questions that help you turn corners to see roads you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. He asks, “Was the Godhead of the Son separated from the flesh of Christ when he died?” ( ST III, 50,…
How does Christ’s passion liberate from sin? Perhaps surprisingly, Thomas’s first answer (III, 49, 1) is entirely Abelardian: “Christ’s Passion is the proper cause of the forgiveness of sins in three ways. First of all, by way of exciting our charity . . . it is by charity that we…
The variety and flexibility of Thomas’s terminology regarding Christ’s passion and sin is remarkable. In ST III, 49, 1, he asks whether Christ’s passion liberates from sin ( liberati a peccato ). Christ’s death brings freedom. Then he shifts gears. Objection 2 says that “Christ’s Passion could not cleanse (…
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