Francis Bacon’s Five Holy Wars – Ron Dart
Ron Dart explores Francis Bacon's "An Advertisement Touching a Holy War" (edited with commentary by Laurence Lampert)
You Cannot Be Christian and Support Torture – Brian Zahnd
You cannot be Christian and support torture. I want to be utterly explicit on this point. There is no possibility of compromise. The support of torture is off the table for a Christian. I suppose you can be some version of a “patriot” and support the use of torture,...
Fountain of Immortality – Meditation on the Orthodox Divine Liturgy
Towards a synthesis of East and West: Human nature, sin and salvation in Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa – Manfred Hedley
For all its diversity and divisions, the Christian faith still holds forth a common agreed narrative: it is the problem of sin met with God's promise of salvation. However, disagreement begins with the effort to quantify these...
Thomas Merton: Hedgehog and Fox – Ron Dart
Thomas Merton: Hedgehog and Fox The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. - Archilochus Already there are some who unabashedly compare Merton to the Fathers of the Church. In fact, this is not far-fetched. It is simply an expression of...
His Kingdom is Peace: What About the Temple Cleansing? Caleb Miller
I am often questioned about my stance on peace, as though it is some radical new thought that we should aim for peace in every circumstance. The questions usually come in the form of a barrage, and the barrage heads in one of two directions. The first is the...
The Sign and Raising Signs of Christ’s Kingdom – Henry Smidstra
A large, ominous, mysterious, billboard along Highway #1 approaching Vancouver from the East boldly proclaims: “Every unjust sentence bullies the victim.” One wonders what they, whoever “they” are, consider a just sentence, one that bullies back the one...
Christians and the Middle East Conflict – Two Reviews by Ron Dart
Challenging Christian Zionism: Conferences and Book Reviews Donald Wagner & Walter T. Davis (Editors), Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land (Wipf and Stock Publishers: Eugene, 2014). Paul S. Rowe, John H.A. Dyck, Jens Zimmerman...
Review of Derek Flood’s ‘Disarming Scripture’ – Brian Zahnd
Theologian, author, and blogger Derek Flood has a new book out — Disarming Scripture. His book has a provocative subtitle: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need To Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did. I’ve read it...
St Isaac the Syrian and Apokatastasis – Fr Aidan (Alvin) Kimel
On 27 November 2014 I gave a talk titled “St Isaac the Syrian, Apokatastasis, and the Renewal of Orthodox Preaching” at the first Theotokos Institute Conference in Cardiff, Wales. An expanded, footnoted version of the talk will be published in the journal Logos:...
Is Religion Breathing It’s Last Breath? – Michael Hardin
I have been reading the work of Rene Girard now for a quarter century and have been applying the insights of the mimetic theory to the Bible and Christian theology for all that time. Girard is not a theologian but he has provided us with an anthropology, a way of...