Saint or devil incarnate?
Empress Theodora is mainly known through the writings of a man who hated her. But there's more to her story.
Why give alms?
Belief in the incarnation places suffering bodies within the realm of Christian responsibility.
The mysteries of young Augustine
Confessions is not primarily about Augustine at all; it is about God’s activity in the particularity of Augustine’s life.
The Many Faces of Christ, by Philip Jenkins
Phil Jenkins's abundant evidence gives lie to the traditional assumption that all but the four canonical Gospels were effectively squelched in the fourth century.
Flesh Made Word, by Emily A. Holmes
Emily Holmes endeavors, with the help of French feminist theories, to understand several of the medieval mystics who are most alien to 21st-century religious sensibilities.
A second time around
What books compel a second—or third or fourth—reading? How is the second reading different from the first, and what does the difference reveal about the book or the reader? We asked ten writers, including Margaret Miles, Gordon Atkinson, Mary Doria Russell, Diana Butler Bass and David Cunningham, to name a book that they chose to reread, and to share their reactions "the second time around."
Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire
In this fascinating book, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker contest a widely held...
Books in search of an author
"Of making many books there is no end,” says Ecclesiastes. Certainly more books are made than can be read, and many are produced that probably didn’t need to be....
Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages
About 15 years ago a proposal to eliminate the Th.D....