Voting about God at the Council of Nicaea
August 6, 2020
Ramsay MacMullen— At Nicaea in AD 325 some 200 bishops assembled. The total is not certain: perhaps a little below that figure, probably a little above it. Not all who… READ MORE
Tag: Christianity
Shifting Paradigms in the Study of Christian Origins
July 3, 2020
Matt Jackson-McCabe— One of the more intriguing questions in the history of religion is how the Jewish apostles of a first-century Jewish messiah came to be considered the authoritative embodiment… READ MORE
A Black Christian Experience
June 23, 2020
Willie James Jennings— Mary, my mother, taught me to respect the dirt. Like many black women from the South, she knew the earth like she knew her own soul. I… READ MORE
The Sacrifice at Calvary
May 12, 2020
Terry Eagleton— Walter Benjamin’s theory of tragedy in his The Origin of German Tragic Drama has some affinities with the Christian view of Calvary. Tragedy for Benjamin is essentially sacrifice,… READ MORE
Material Culture and the Ethnicity of Non-Jewish Christians
April 23, 2020
Christopher Stroup— The cities of the Roman Empire were filled with gods and the citizens who honored them with festivals, processions, buildings, and benefactions. The followers of Jesus—later called Christians—lived… READ MORE
The Gospel of Matthew: Within and Without Judaism
September 16, 2019
John Kampen— Matthew is usually regarded as the “most Jewish gospel” since it bears evidence of more direct and more informed interaction with texts, concepts, and institutions usually identified with… READ MORE
Examining the Secular Age
August 7, 2019
Nicholas Wolterstorff— Recently I dipped once again into Charles Taylor’s massive A Secular Age, and one of the themes he develops there led me to reflect on the implications of… READ MORE
What happened after the Crusades?
May 23, 2019
Christopher Tyerman— We all know about the Crusades, don’t we? They were wars fought by western European Christians against Muslim control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land of Palestine. They… READ MORE
Rethinking the History of Religious Freedom
May 22, 2019
Robert Louis Wilken— In the Supreme Court case Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 1940, that upheld compulsory pledging of allegiance to the U.S. flag in schools, Justice Felix Frankfurter, writing… READ MORE
On Easter and Resurrection
April 20, 2019
Candida Moss— At Easter, as almost everyone knows, Christians celebrate and think about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is a foundational moment in Christian history… READ MORE
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