Christmas
On the Poverty of Christmas
A Nativity sanitized of its social and political context is devoid of incarnation. Insofar as the phenomenon of Christmas is "Incarnate," it includes all the dung and flies that accompany our fleshly existence.
Nick Freiling
Nick is Managing Editor at Theophaneia. He's a father of five and lives in Jacksonville, FL.
penal substitutionary atonement
Beholding Calvary: On the Phenomenological Poverty of Penal Substitution
The model of penal substitution occludes the event of the Crucifixion with abstract mechanism. But the phenomenon of Calvary offers and compels something more.
universalism
Does universal salvation negate the sacrifice of the religious martyr?
Martyrdom in a universalist paradigm entails no fear of eternal damnation and is a more credible "witness" before others.
incarnation
On the Need for Incarnational Priors
So long as we take our human experience seriously, anything that is thoroughly arbitrary cannot be genuinely salvific.
Bulgakov
'Creatio ex nihilo' cannot be repeated
A brief reflection on Bulgakov and the irrevocability of everything.
judgment
Can We Ever Be Lost to God?
Insofar as no moment "in time" is lost on God (since God is not bound by time and moments to God do not, as to us, slip away), what happens to those moments wherein one "chooses" God if we are to believe that one could later
Good Friday
Jesus Didn't Kill Himself
At Calvary, Jesus was executed by the earthly powers of his day. "Atonement" cannot be sanitized of this political and historical reality.
apocalypse
An Inconvenient Horizon: Apocalypse Versus the Cult of an Endless Tomorrow
In an age of techno-nationalist optimism, apocalypse is heresy. But only our eschatological horizon can reveal what is ultimately illusory.
eucharist
Mircea Eliade and Primordial Eucharist
Catholic and Orthodox Christians participate in Mircea Eliade's "eternal return" on the occasion of every eucharistic celebration.
Thomas
Doubting Disciples and "Proof of Death"
Thomas' stipulations are as much proof that Jesus had, in fact, died as they were proof of his resurrection.
Bulgakov
A Gilded Manger is No Longer Christ's
Persecution and poverty of spirit do not run counter to the spirit of Christmas. In fact, such conditions are at the heart of incarnation itself.
apocalypse
On the Uses and Abuses of "Realized Eschatology"
Insofar as we persist in using the word eschatology, it cannot by definition, for us here and now, ever be fully "realized."