1 Peter 1:1: Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered. Peter here uses the word “diaspora,” which in Jewish writing of the first century refers to the scattering of Jews after the Babylonian exile. This is one of the many ways that Peter identifies his . . . . Continue Reading »
Trinity season seems to be an anomaly in the church year. The other seasons mark and celebrate what God has done for us. Advent and Christmas celebrate the incarnation of the Son, Epiphany marks His revelation to the Gentiles, Lent is a time for remembering His sufferings and death; Easter is a . . . . Continue Reading »
RG Collingwood has a whale of a time excoriating individualistic conceptions of art. He recognizes a theological motif behind the post-romantic notion of the isolated artistic genius: “Individualism conceives a man as if he were God, a self-contained and self-sufficient creative power . . . . Continue Reading »
Hegel writes that the Trinity enables Christianity and especially Christian art to attain a concreteness impossible in Judaism and Islam: “When we state . . . of God thathe is simple One, the Supreme Being as such, we have thereby merely given utterance to a lifeless abstraction of the . . . . Continue Reading »
PROVERBS 27:12 As we have seen repeatedly in our study of Proverbs, wisdom is a kind of foresight, an ability to foretell the future, an ability to see down the road. The prudent or “crafty” ( arum ) man can see the evil ahead and does what he needs to do to avoid it. The prudent man is . . . . Continue Reading »
Henri Pirenne, in his Economic and Social History of medieval Europe, describes the regulation of economic life in medieval towns during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Pirenne is admittedly old news, and perhaps more recent studies have corrected some of his claims. The town government had . . . . Continue Reading »
Ha-Joon Chang argues in Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism that highly developed economies impose unfair and hypocritical demands on developing economies. In particular, the nations that control the international trade and monetary agencies require . . . . Continue Reading »
A discussion this morning concerning the economic impact of the gospel got me to thinking about Byzantium. What kind of economic system did the Eastern Christian empire, with its centralized state and luxurious capital, have? I found some help in Angeliki Laiou and Cecile . . . . Continue Reading »
In his lovely book of meditations on art, New York City, 9/11, American culture, Japan, and Christianity ( Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture ), Makoto Fujimura tells the story of Sen no Rikyu, “the sixteenth-century tea master who is most responsible for the development of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Toward the end of “On Seeking God,” Nicholas of Cusa has this to say: “when an artists seeks the face of a king in a block of wood, the artists rejects everything else that is limited except the face itself. For the artist sees in the wood, through the concept of faith, the . . . . Continue Reading »
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