Life of Testing

Jesus’ temptation is a preview of the entire gospel. Jesus, the Son of God, becomes flesh, and enters the wilderness of this world, the wilderness that Israel has become. He assumed all human frailties and undergoes all the tests that Israel and all humanity have endured. He is . . . . Continue Reading »

Best Catholic Writing

Shameless plug follows. Jim Manney of Loyola Press was generous enough to ask permission to reprint my essay, “Why Protestants Can’t Write” to The Best Catholic Writing, 2007 . As if I didn’t have enough troubles. The volume includes essays by real Catholics like Pope . . . . Continue Reading »

Calvin and the Goodness of God

The popular picture of Calvin suggests that he was a theologian of truth, and that he subordinates God’s goodness and beauty fairly radically to His truthfulness. In his recent Notre Dame Press book on Calvin’s theology of Word and Image, Randall Zachman thinks otherwise: “I . . . . Continue Reading »

Two Hermeticisms

It is often thought that Hermeticism faded during the Christian Middle Ages, to be revived in the 15th century with Ficino’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum . One of the central claims of Florian Ebeling’s The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus (Cornell, 2007) is that this is . . . . Continue Reading »

It

Some people fascinate. Some people have “It.” But what is It? Yale theater professor Joseph Roach explores this question in his wide-ranging cultural history, entitled simply It (University of Michigan, 2007). Turns out, It is like porn - you know it when you see it, but you can’t . . . . Continue Reading »