Like many artistic and intellectual movements, Modernism challenged its immediate predecessors by reaching back to earlier artistic forms. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona notes, for instance, the decisive influence that Grunewald’s Isenheim Alterpiece had on Picasso, and on the Guernica in . . . . Continue Reading »
Bavinck ( Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume ) has this helpful discussion of the meaning of “true” in Protestant ecclesiology: “A true church in an absolute sense is impossible on earth. For that matter, neither can a wholly false church exist; to qualify for that . . . . Continue Reading »
Wright writes that Paul’s “re-reading” of the OT is not “a matter merely of typology, picking a few earlier themes and watching the same patterns repeating themselves, though this also happens often enough.” Rather, “Paul had in mind an essentially historical and . . . . Continue Reading »
Wise words from Wright ( Paul: In Fresh Perspective ) about the biblical assessment of empire: “Things are not straightforward, by our Procrustean standards, in any of these books [Amos, Isaiah, Daniel]. When God acts to rescue the three righteous Jews from the furnace, or Daniel from the den . . . . Continue Reading »
As many dramatically-inclined Bible teachers have said, the page that separates Old and New Testaments shouldn’t be there. It’s theologically indefensible since it bewitches us into thinking that we have two Bibles instead of one. That page is a disaster for literary reasons too. . . . . Continue Reading »
I offer some thoughts on the cultural significance of the Eucharist on the First Things site today: http://www.firstthings.com/ . . . . Continue Reading »
In his essay in A Broken Beauty , Gordon Fuglie offers this description of The Art World: It “is in truth a comparatively small and elite cultural entity. It takes itself very seriously, is adequately funded if not always wealthy, and is narrowly self-defined and, as a consequence, . . . . Continue Reading »
In his Rembrandt, Life and Work (Landmarks in Art History) , Jakob Rosenberg argued that Rembrandt rejected the classicist ideal that beauty had to be fully controlled with clearly bounded lines. He notes that “for Rembrandt the essence of truth about man and nature lies in the ultimate . . . . Continue Reading »
God Himself is speech, language, Word. This is implicit in the opening pages of the Bible. God created heaven and earth, and when we see how that works in more detail we find that He does it by speech. The God revealed in Genesis 1 is a Creator, Maker, Actor, but He is all these things because He . . . . Continue Reading »
In an intriguing TNR review of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs , Evgeny Morozov says that the Apple “philosophy” - a form of pop-Platonism emphasizing the link between “essence” and function, purity, unornamented sleekness - cannot be understood except as an expression of . . . . Continue Reading »
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