Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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Derrida polarizes gift and economy, gift and exchange, gift and the circle. Like Heidegger, he posits a quasi-transcendental giving that is not giving of something by someone to someone. This pure donation eludes the calculating circle of gift and return. As always, Derrida is on the verge of Trinitarian theology.…
Caputo ( The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) , 217 ) points to Derrida’s discussion of Matthew 6 as the initiation of “the duel between Christian and Jew.” Caputo sums up Derrida’s characterization: “This duel is always cast by…
Derrida’s philosophy is a tantalizing ghost of Judaism and/or Christianity, and that is no accident. In The Gift of Death, Second Edition & Literature in Secret (Religion and Postmodernism) , he places his work in the tradition of modern philosophy: What “engenders” the Christian themes that surround the gift, he…
What would have happened to modern and postmodern philosophy if the philosophers had read, and accepted, the account of the Aqedah in Hebrews 11: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was…
Caputo ( The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) , 181-5) notes that for Derrida “traditions trace out the circle of a debt,” and thus tradition does not constitute gift in the strict sense (which, on Derrida’s terms, elude debt).…
In The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) (174), John Caputo sums up Derrida’s claim that textuality is a matter of faith: “A text is but a misty, ephemeral, spectral thing, an event ( evenement ) with a kind of…
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