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How to Fix a Hole in the Heart

The doctor turned to face us. He was a tall man, athletic and thin, put-together and with a quiet, intellectual air. He wasn’t what you’d call handsome, but he carried himself well and had a lot of things going for him: crisp posture, trousers neatly creased, expensive loafers. He even smelled . . . . Continue Reading »

System’s Failure

When Ibram X. Kendi and other anti-racists take the fact of disproportionate outcomes as proof of racist practice at work, common sense asks, “Who’s doing it? Where’s the bias? Show us the evidence.” Common sense treats racism (or any other identity injustice) as an empirical matter, an . . . . Continue Reading »

My Father’s Living Will

It is a haze of fog and low cloud at dawn and the kookaburras are wild with ecstasy. The soft low click of the neighbors’ gate breaks in among the birdsong: opening, closing, opening. They are leaving early for the long weekend of midsummer. In the room next to mine, a man is retching, heaving, . . . . Continue Reading »

Photo Negative

It was Lisa del Giocondo who first alerted me to the perils of photography. I’ve been visiting her for years at her spacious home in the Louvre, and I have always been bemused by the ritual of her admirers approaching her, camera in hand, clicking away furiously. But this summer’s visit, my . . . . Continue Reading »

Critical Grace Theory

As debates over critical race theory rage on, both in society and within the church, one important point seems to have been missed by all sides: Many of the most important biblical writers were among the sharpest critical theorists of their day. I may be naive to imagine that an appreciation of the . . . . Continue Reading »

A Jewish Theology of Resurrection

Does Judaism need a theology of Christianity? The usual answer is no: Whereas without Jews and Judaism there is no Jesus—both historically and theologically—the reverse does not hold. And yet some major Jewish thinkers have attempted to sketch such a theology. The great medieval . . . . Continue Reading »

Being Cultured

In 1909 the academic economist and former Marxist Sergei Bulgakov, a priest’s son who had recently and very publicly returned to Christian faith, published a long essay on the crisis of Russian culture and the mentality of the Russian intelligentsia. It is important to recognize that this . . . . Continue Reading »

A Terrible Grace

Music is a divine balm in the midst of the world’s sorrows. Music is also a sorrow in search of a balm. It offers a sui generis grace, one that we may wish to approach carefully. Most of us understand the two sides of music’s power intuitively. Balm in the midst of sorrow is what we love. . . . . Continue Reading »

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