Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every attempt to understand the Christian sacraments makes use of comparisons or analogies with other rituals, events, or customs. Calvin and those who followed him, for example, spoke of the sacraments as “seals,” and compared them to the “seal of approval” that an official impresses on a document. Thinking about…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out in his essay "Hitler and Israel, or On Prayer" (available for $2.00 from Biblical Horizons ) that it is God’s word "No!" that establishes in a culture the distinction between the Creator and the creature. The Bible repeatedly says "No!" to every human attempt to…
If you missed Gattaca at the movie theaters, you can probably check it out from your local video store now. And you should. This is one of those relatively rare thought-provoking movies that can stand being watched with brain in gear more than once. It is also poetic, sensitive, visually…
Part 4: The Nephilim Factor Western Civilization partakes of what I call "the Nephilim Factor." The Enoch Factor means that the pagans get there first. This is both a blessing and a danger. As a blessing, it means that they work out techniques of dominion over the lower creation that…
The Worship Service Then the one speaking with me took me by the hair and lifted me into the air in the middle of the great room. And as I watched, I saw people entering the room to the sound of the great bells outside. Then entered from all four…
Part 3: Philosophy (continued) If we realize that human beings are the images of God, and that man hates God, then we realize that all non-Christian political philosophy is founded on a fundamental hatred of other human beings, a hatred manifest in contempt. Rome, like Enoch, was founded on the…
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Thomas thinks that grateful repayment of favors should match the sentiment of the giver rather than the deed or thing give. One of the objections is we can’t know what a benefactor is thinking: “We cannot base our actions on the unknown. God alone knows the heart of man. The…
Thomas relies heavily on Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca in his discussion of gratitude, but at one crucial point he introduces a distinctively Christian theme. Must we thank everyone who does us a beneficium ? Thomas answers with 1 Thessalonians 5:18: In all things give thanks. Ultimately, since God is cause…
One of the things often missed in critiques of scholasticism is its practical thrust. Questions angels and pinheads don’t capture the real genius of the best of scholasticism. In the hands of a master like Thomas, scholasticism is a mode of pastoral theology. A few illustrations from Thomas’s discussion of…
Robert Wilken closes a superb chapter on early Christian art in his recent The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity with a comment on the epochal significance of art in Christian history (pp. 53-4): “‘A cultural event of some importance was taking place,’ wrote the art historian Paul…
The editor of volume of the Summa on the virtues offers this superb and even lovely summary of the centrality of justice in Thomas’s conception of community. God is the source of all communal goods, since “each individual participates because physical, moral, spiritual, cultural values are derived from the causality…
Every time I read it, I’m impressed again with Edmund Bertram’s spirited description of the public role of pastors in Mansfield Park . He begins his speech in response to Mary Crawford’s dismissive “a clergyman is nothing.” Edmund replies: “A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. He must…
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