Unable to answer these arguments, I remained silent toward these people; but now I beg you Father, to instruct me in what I should say to defend the truth, so that (following the Apostle’s injunction) I may “be ready to give an account of the faith that is in us.” —St. Gregory Palamas I’ve been…
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 5. The Witness of Beauty in Practice How individual churches can most readily manifest beauty to their communities will vary depending on their circumstances. For this reason, I will not try to be overly specific about what people should do to achieve this end, nor will I suggest any…
Last week, noted Calvin College philosopher James K. A. Smith caused a stir on Twitter when he posted a picture of himself wearing a pink “You Are Loved” T-shirt, captioned “At @Calvin Uni, ALL students are welcomed, affirmed, and loved. To our LGBTQ students always, but today especially: #YouAreLoved.” Further context for the pic was…
The steps of the Sacre-Coeur billow down the hill like a robe, and hundreds loiter on the hem, maybe hoping to be healed. Church steps have cradled them for centuries—the crippled, the homeless, the lost tourists, the tired pedestrians—but here at this place are three hundred steps instead of five or ten. The loiterers…
Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice. By Thaddeus J. Williams. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020. 288 pp. $22.99 (paper). “I can’t do it,” I told the couple sitting in front of me. It was the summer of 2020. The COVID pandemic was continuing to build, the presidential campaign…
Having lived through what has surely been the strangest and possibly most unpleasant twelve months that we in England have faced in its collective life for many decades, I am hoping and praying that the crisis that we have all been living with is now winding down and will soon be behind us. As Lent…
The end of the American Church is imminent. At least two states have willfully attempted to stop the Church from meeting together, provoking the Supreme Court’s rebuke,[1] and there remains open hostility to the sanctity of life and marriage by so-called progressives.[2] Both major political parties are jointly liable for the Church’s decline, at least…
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 2. The Beauty of God We have seen that beauty, as a transcendental, is a property of not just some beings but all beings. From this a significant implication follows: The point here is the very notion of a “transcendental”: the word indicates that which transcends, or goes beyond,…
For those of us in the Church of England attuned to its particular frameworks of time (the Church Calendar) and place (“this realm of England”[1]), the Valentine’s weekend of 2021 marked a solemn matrimony of two historic events. On the one hand, we were greeted with the news that 13 million of those most susceptible…
Almighty God, To whom all restless hearts are open All old desires known And from whom no guilty secrets are hid Of thy great mercy, Regard the split men. Regard the man Who still dreams Christian dreams, Who cannot pass a chapel Except he enters in, Who cannot hear a carol Except he joins the…