Yahweh shows Abram the starry heavens and says “so shall your seed be.” Abram believes, and Yahweh counts it as righteousness (Genesis 15). When Paul quotes this in Galatians, he emphasizes the singleness of that Seed: The Seed is Christ.Paul claims that the seed promised to Abram is . . . . Continue Reading »
In an essay on university bureaucracy , Tim Parks quotes a length passage from Little Dorrit , where Dickens describes the work of the Office of Circumlocution: “The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public . . . . Continue Reading »
Orthodox Christianity is often accused of fomenting antisemitism because of its “supercessionist” conviction that Christianity overcomes and replaces Judaism. Antisemitism is more accurately the product of the abandonment of orthodoxy. In a fine essay on Erich Auerbach , Arthur Krystal . . . . Continue Reading »
In the New Yorker , James Wood retraces the steps from his youthful secret atheism in a devoutly Christian home to his discovery of the pure freedom of fiction: “My anguish about death was keen, because two members of my parents congregation died at an early age, of cancer. One of them was a . . . . Continue Reading »
Lorrie Moore doesn’t offer a moral critic of the sex in the controversial lesbian film Blue is the Warmest Color. Instead, she calls the sex scenes ” an almost fatal narrative mistake .” She goes on: “Cinematic sex (unlike pillow talk, and that includes the pillow talk here, . . . . Continue Reading »
R. R. Reno thinks that Francis is best described as a “populist .” In another in a series of carefully balanced essays on the Pope, Reno assesses the pluses and minuses of populist papalism. Reno says that he finds Francis’s “generalizations” about capitalism and the . . . . Continue Reading »
George Weigel characterizes Pope Francis a “revolutionary,” but insists that he is not a revolutionary in the ways most observers have suggested. Weigel writes, “The pope is passionately concerned about the poor, and he knows that poverty in the 21st century takes many forms. It . . . . Continue Reading »
Behind objections to Trinitarian “relational ontology” lie assumptions about creation and the way human language applies to God . The assumptions of theologians often differ from the assumptions of the biblical writers. . . . . Continue Reading »
Christians often deny that addictions are “diseases” and that they are “genetic.” But this denial often assumes a materialist view of psychology, as if there are only material causes of disease and only “genetic” forms of inheritance. If we say that even . . . . Continue Reading »
Aidan Nichols gives a neat summary of the Triune unity of the church in his Figuring out the Church: Her Marks, and Her Masters . Following Heribert Muhlen, he particularly emphasizes the role of the Spirit, who is “one Person in many persons” (27). More fully: “The Church’s . . . . Continue Reading »
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