It is a widespread and ecumenical complaint that most of the academic work of biblical interpretation today is useless for preaching, praying, or the life of the Church. Leroy Huizenga, author of the excellent study of St. Matthew’s Gospel The New Isaac (2009) has, since he converted to . . . . Continue Reading »
David Bentley Hart has never been a man of the Church, devoted to its orthodoxy, dedicated to the emerging wisdom of the Christian community and its Great Tradition. Continue Reading »
Universalism begins with the ancient gnostics, and once embraced by Christians, tends to unravel every major Christian dogma. This powerful tendency helps us understand—if not explain—Hart’s fall into Hindu metaphysics and gnostic theology. Continue Reading »
I teach in a great books program at an Evangelical university. Almost all students in the program are born-and-bred Christians of the nondenominational variety. A number of them have been both thoroughly churched and educated through Christian schools or homeschooling curricula. Yet an . . . . Continue Reading »
I recently attended an academic conference at the University of Notre Dame called “Intersectional Inquiries and Collaborative Action: Gender and Race.” It felt like a return to my undergraduate years in the early 1990s. I saw women with shaved heads wearing ethnic print scarves, Birkenstocks, . . . . Continue Reading »
The idea that human beings are non-bodily persons inhabiting non-personal bodies never quite goes away. Although the mainstreams of Christianity and Judaism long ago rejected it, what is sometimes described as “body-self dualism” is back with a vengeance, and its followers are legion. Whether in . . . . Continue Reading »
Complaints about aging contain an implicit affirmation of the body, rooted in the truth that our bodies are us. When our bodies ail, we ail; when they fail, we fail. We touch the world—lovers and enemies, soccer and sunsets, sonnets and sushi—only through eyes and ears and brains and nerves and hands and tongues. Continue Reading »