Over the last few weeks, our one-year-old son Jack has started pointing at things. Usually it’s pretty simple to figure out what’s caught his attention—“tree” and “squirrel” are perennial favorites, unsurprisingly. But the picture gets more complicated when it comes to his fascination with, and apparent love of, everything that happens at church. For Jack, […]
Friday, 06 May, 2022 by John Ehrett
I’ve been a longtime admirer of the work of Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart. Between his sprawling vocabulary, affinity for Origenist universalism, and gratuitous potshots at critics, he’s certainly not to everyone’s taste, but even where I end up disagreeing with him, I’ve always found myself challenged in a good way. For the last […]
Friday, 01 April, 2022 by John Ehrett
Most readers of Silence, Shusaku Endo’s celebrated novel of Christian persecution in seventeenth-century Japan, are left haunted by its conclusion. In an agonized bid to alleviate the suffering of others being tortured in his stead, the Jesuit priest Rodrigues formally apostasizes, placing his foot on an image of Christ’s face known as a fumi-e. At […]
Wednesday, 02 March, 2022 by John Ehrett
One of the most arresting moments of the Passion narratives must surely be Jesus’s confrontation with Pontius Pilate—a standoff between the representative of imperial Rome and a Galilean carpenter who claims a kingdom “not of this world.” Pilate clearly knows that whoever Jesus is, He is no common criminal or insurrectionist like Barabbas. And yet […]
Friday, 04 February, 2022 by John Ehrett
One of the more notable quirks of the broad Christian tradition is the fact that different denominations have traditionally numbered the Ten Commandments quite differently. There’s broad consensus that there are ten commandments—or, in the Jewish tradition, Ten Words—but the precise arrangement of the commandments certainly isn’t consistent across the board. This can lead to […]
Friday, 07 January, 2022 by John Ehrett
Traditionalist Catholic historians routinely tend to argue that Martin Luther’s Reformation ushered in an age of terrifying political absolutism. On this account, the principle of cuius regio, eius religio—“whose realm, their religion”—which emerged out of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, effectively handed political leaders authority over their subjects’ consciences. In so doing, the principle disrupted […]
Monday, 06 December, 2021 by John Ehrett
One of the more familiar tropes of Roman Catholic historiography is the claim that the Reformation marked an immediate sea change in Christians’ understanding of salvation. On this account, a realist metaphysics of participation and transformation abruptly gave way to a nominalist, purely “forensic” account of the Christian life, in which God chooses arbitrarily to […]
Friday, 05 November, 2021 by John Ehrett
It’s impossible to read the works of most prominent Christian theologians from the latter half of the twentieth century without noticing a common theme: the ubiquity of distinctly ecumenical considerations. That is to say, such texts are animated by a strong sense of the possibility that longstanding distinctions between Christian communions might be overcome at […]
Friday, 08 October, 2021 by John Ehrett
As a proud son of the Reformation, I’m probably not the best person to comment on topics as arcane as intra-Catholic liturgical disputes. And yet I can’t help thinking that Pope Francis’s recent decision to restrict the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass has to be one of the more befuddling decisions of his papacy. […]
Friday, 10 September, 2021 by John Ehrett
Lutheran theologian Jordan Cooper observed on Twitter a month or so ago that “[t]he ‘just have more kids’ approach to church growth would be more compelling if it was evident that the kids in our congregations actually remained in the church past confirmation.” It was a remark that particularly struck home with me, because after […]
Monday, 02 August, 2021 by John Ehrett
Not long ago, I finished reading (with a sleeping baby on my lap) Catherine Pickstock’s excellent new book Aspects of Truth: A New Religious Metaphysics. It is undoubtedly one of the most difficult—and yet profoundly stimulating—volumes I’ve read this year. I actually set it aside for a month or so between starting and finishing, wondering […]
Friday, 02 July, 2021 by John Ehrett
If you’ve ever found yourself straying into the distinctive online realm that is Weird Christian Twitter, sooner or later you’ll come to the conclusion that “Very Online” Lutherans are a pretty scarce bunch. It’s not hard to come across Catholics arguing over the possibility of distributism and the merits of Francisco Franco, “1689er” Reformed Baptists […]
Friday, 04 June, 2021 by John Ehrett