In "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions," John Donne reflects on the course of his sickness from a typhus epidemic, creating a dazzling masterpiece of English prose and Christian meditation.
In "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions," John Donne reflects on the course of his sickness from a typhus epidemic, creating a dazzling masterpiece of English prose and Christian meditation.
In his advice about dealing with plagues, Luther counsels against over-reactions and false piety. He also recommends "self-quarantining."
As we face the coronavirus, the Bible has much to say about plagues and pestilences. These are presented as signs of God's wrath, but they are also expressive of the Gospel. When Aaron and David interpose themselves between the plague and the people, they are foreshadowing Christ.
In the course of his "Confession," in which St. Patrick recounts his life as a slave and a missionary, he gives a statement of his faith, a profound and eloquent expression of the Christology and Trinitarianism of the Nicene Creed.
The coronavirus outbreak has been called "the first postmodern pandemic", though the author didn't say what is particularly postmodern about it. But he is right. The disease, with the panic it has caused, is unsettling our postmodernist worldview.
An account of a young man who found his childhood evangelicalism too shallow. He moved to progressive Christianity, but found that even more shallow. Finally, he discovered deep Christianity.
The divorce rate has dropped dramatically since its high point in the 1980s and, particularly, since the "Great Recession" of 2008. But so has the marriage rate of the middle class.
Those who criticize us Lutherans for being "too Catholic" often hold "Catholic" beliefs themselves. Contemporary worship, as practiced by many evangelicals and Pentecostals, works from the assumption that Christian content can be conveyed by any style. This is similar, a writer has pointed out, to the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which likewise splits substance and form away from each other, rather than bringing them together.
In his "Table Talk," Luther reflects on the spiritual and existential significance of plagues. He was thinking of the Black Death, but what he says relates also to our current coronavirus epidemic. "The greatest plague," though, is something completely different.
Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, has launched a forceful defense of capitalism. In a speech to the Hudson Institute, she takes on not only the overt socialism of Bernie Sanders and the quasi-socialism of the other Democrats, but also the "socialism lite" that she sees in the business world and in her fellow Republicans.
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