We often depict Origen as a speculative, metaphysically preoccupied theologian with a penchant for heterodoxy. His down-to-earth text critical work on the Bible often gets less attention, unfortunately. While editing…
It depends a lot on what you mean by "poor."
Surely, ancient Christians always erred on the side of doctrinal and liturgical purity?
'Tis the season for an airing of intellectual grievances!
And they say that Lutheranism doesn't travel as well as Calvinism.
Relics didn't function quite like they do in Age of Empires.
Because presentist gloom is good for clicks.
Faith isn't really supposed to be a "leap."
A case study on Christological formulae.
Letter 201
There's a scale problem.
On that quip that is "too good to check."
I had my doubts.
Can we put this on a T-shirt for 2028?
Even for kings, it turns out.
This is just a short public service announcement drawing attention to T. C. Schmidt’s hot-off-the-digital-presses Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford 2025). An anonymous donation…
After all, what's more important than getting baptism right?
I am once again asking the people to please read a primary source.
The answer may surprise you.
Sending the dubiously accused to the electric chair is a severe miscarriage of justice.
Do not expect to be crowned promptly
Children used to be seen as an economic asset to their parents.
How eager were Christians to destroy books they didn't like?
Let's throw another monkey wrench into the plentiful oversimplifications of Christian-Roman relations.
An important chapter in The Hobbit might have looked much different.
What do you do if you find an inauthentic biblical passage that's accepted in the wider Church?
Eusebius on the Two Ways of Christian Life
A case that the terminology dates back to the third century.
Who needs Limbo when you have Logos?
Does the aversion to national baptism stem from democratic sensibilities, or something else?
In the year 324, on September 18 . . . .
The role of bishops and councils may be overrated in the evolution of the canon.
How might a future society look back on us?
Just how homogeneous are societies, both ancient and modern?
How do tradition, the Bible, history, and authority all fit together in Irenaeus' model?
A medieval appeal to oral tradition.
What are emperors good for, after all?
Is Christian activism part of the larger problem?
Wright and Bird have actually said something much more ideologically freighted than they themselves appreciate on most pages.
On Eusebian theo-fascism and esoteric readings of Paul.
Greek fathers did sometimes translate and read their Latin counterparts.
Justin and Eusebius cannot pass as escapists.
So how was that whole “Constantinian” project going in the mid-400s?
Another healthy reminder that medieval Christianity is not always in continuity with what came before.
Would that I had this book on my shelf as an undergraduate.
A review of a recent, moralizing history by "Tertullian."
The Greeks rebuked Latin ideals of clerical purity.
There's no easy way to say, "apomnemoneumata."
Why does Justin seem to presume the rite is simply for older initiates?
No, Constantine didn't set the biblical canon.
Impossible, say you?
Ancient Christianity is not necessarily the same as medieval Christianity.
A few preliminary musings as to what I expect to find in the book.
Even before Constantine, the overall impression is that Christians not uncommonly served the empire in various capacities.
Jesus, says Chrysostom, was more worried about Mary's soul than parental courtesy.
Come for the Platonist critiques of Stoic positions, stay for the C. S. Lewis reference.
Christ's psychological profile would have had the Stoa squirming uncomfortably.
Is Paul making a point about politics?
A reminder that Rome was not a proto-fascist or proto-Stalinist system.
Would Augustine have tolerated NFP?
Aren't all the Church Fathers supposed to be on the same side?
One of the most important historians of the last century read C. S. Lewis as a young man.
Eusebius’ version very much diverges from the early apocryphal account of Mary and Joseph's union.
“In this grove, let no one pile dung, nor dump a body, nor perform parental rites.”
Did Jesus have blood siblings?
Who was reading whom?
If it ever shows up, there will be fireworks.
Irenaeus comes to Egypt.
Constantine founded Christendom—or so we are told.
Christ himself is the bedrock of the church, says Didymus.
Maybe doctrinal development can leap the gap, but it seems a bit far.
A martyrdom story reveals some interesting theological and moral assumptions.
A potpourri of Daniel, Josephus, apocalypticism, and the fate of Jerusalem.
Some Greek translations of Daniel 7 link the "one like a son of man" to God himself.
Ancient literary authenticity may have had more to do with content than who put the words to page.
“For if God is not angered by the impious and the unjust, by no means does he love the pious and the just.”
"You have not experienced Paul until you have read him in the original Aramaic."
One did not publish anything bad about a sitting emperor, unless one was prepared for one's career to end, or worse.
Paul's words closely parallel other Jewish sources in antiquity.
Lactantius demonstrates that some non-Christian theologians had already proposed gender-inclusive divinity.
Prominent Christians—even saints—were known to act quite badly in late antiquity.
Not all the church fathers agreed with Augustine about the mythology of Enoch.
If we find Witherspoon guilty on these specific charges, we will not easily acquit the New Testament.
From what I gather, Philodemus’ own ideal for the Christian social ethic is rather different from Aristides’.
Prior to Augustine, early Christian intellectuals forcefully stressed human free will over against predestination.
Herod the Great had more to fear than a newborn usurper.
How was this famous apocryphon received in the early Christian world?
To paraphrase the words of Lady Wisdom to Boethius, “Stuff happens.”
According to Athanasius, St. Anthony feared his body would be turned into a relic after death.
An ancient bishop suggests the Protestant emphasis on Scripture predates Protestantism.
Irenaeus's view of apostolic succession was no abstract theory, but an appeal to history.
Fragments from the lost epistle of Second James.
Was Israel waiting for a divine messiah or a human one? Richard Bauckham's new study delves into this question
The surprisingly practical church calendar.
Did Tolkien have room for shades of gray within and without Middle Earth?
Lewis's lesser-known essays reveal some surprising perspectives on religion in the West.
Although pseudonymous, works credited to Clement give us a window into early church polity.
Did ancient Christians feel guilty about possible implication in unethically sourced food?
Tidy modern narratives about the economic views of past Christians rarely fit the historical data
A fresh, tentative explanation for early differences in baptismal practice. Part 3 of 3.
Is there a fresh explanation for differing baptismal practices in the ancient church? Part 2 of 3.
Can we find a fresh explanation for differing baptismal practices in the early church?
Does sociological analysis have all the explanatory power it often claims?
Does the "social justice" turn of some evangelicals line up with New Testament's approach to societal problems?
Do the earliest days of church history offer pushback to a defense of "Christian nationalism"?
