David Thomson (at TNR) thinks that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, and his legacy of acting, raises some fundamental questions about what we take as entertainment these days:“No movie actor has risked so much on despondency. This is not to say that every film star has been . . . . Continue Reading »
Philip Roth famously announced last year that he was quitting. Writing in the TLS, Adan Thirlwell suggests that what he’s actually doing is continuing his career in an inverted fashion.Thirlwell cites a 1984 interview with Hermione Lee, where Roth described his working . . . . Continue Reading »
In an essay on Dostoevsky and evil in Between Religion and Rationality, Joseph Frank observes that Dostoevsky frequently leads readers into moral horrors, but his “unflinching explorations of evil” don’t leave readers paralyzed. How does that work?Frank traces . . . . Continue Reading »
In one of his late essays in Speech Genres, Bakhtin traces the secularization of literature to the solvent effects of irony:“Irony has penetrated all languages of modern times (especially French); it has penetrated into all words and forms . . . Irony is everywhere - from the . . . . Continue Reading »
In a 1988 article in the Journal of Literature and Theology (2:1), Milbank sketches the contours of a “theology without substance.” Along the way, he offers a critique of Augustine’s signum-res distinction and the implied metaphysics.On the one hand, Augustine pours some of . . . . Continue Reading »
Jesus threatens to throw the self-appointed prophetess Jezebel onto a bed (Revelation 3:22). The threat carries multiple resonances.The original Jezebel died by being thrown from a window to the ground in front of conquering Jehu. Jesus is the new Jehu throwing Jezebel to her . . . . Continue Reading »
In his contribution to The Reader Must Understand, Crispin Fletcher-Louis argues convincingly that “heaven and earth” in Jesus’ eschatological discourses doesn’t refer to “a collapse of the space-time universe . . . but as a collapse of a mythical space-time . . . . Continue Reading »
God hangs the earth on nothing (Job 26:7).That’s literally true. There’s no changeless substance beneath the surface of change, nothing holding us up, making it all stable and safe. There’s nothing holding creation in place except God.Every effort to hang the world on . . . . Continue Reading »
A friend recently criticized the popular use of dance imagery to describe the perichoretic life of the Trinity. I laughed and played along. I’ve been in churches that have tried to enact the perichoretic dance, and, trust me, it ain’t inspiring.But then I want to say: Doesn’t that . . . . Continue Reading »
Registration is now open for the Pentecost term course at Trinity House, an introduction to liturgical theology taught by Pastor Jeffrey Meyers of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, St. Louis. For more information and registration, . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
