Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Leithart

Home
Evangelical
Enemies

Enemies

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm by Peter Leithart

Enemies 2017-09-06T23:36:49+06:00 Peter Leithart

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Here is an address I gave at NSA graduation, May 12, 2004.

Graduating Seniors, Parents, Friends of the College, Colleagues:

It is a great privilege to address you all this evening, especially the graduating seniors. I am more grateful than I can express that I have had the privilege of teaching you, most of you for two full years. You have been a model class, and have set the bar very high for future students. We will sorely miss your many contributions to the life of the college ?Eyour energy, your curiosity, your joy, and above all your enthusiastic, if somewhat gullible, submission to every experiment the faculty wanted to try out on you.

Our goal at NSA has never been merely to train minds; our goal has been to train men and women. We aim not only to help you think rigorously; we aim to help you to live vigorously. In this my final opportunity to talk to you as a class, I want to address one of the most important but usually implicit lessons we have tried to give you at NSA. This lesson was implicit in philosophy classes and in Mr. Wilson?s preaching; in theology and history and in the Psalms you?ve learned to sing. It was evident in the conflicts over the history conference and in the tedious debates on the newspaper editorial page and community discussion boards. This evening, I want to make that theme explicit, and to set it in a larger cultural and political context.

Let me identify the lesson by quoting one of NSA?s favorite pagan prophets, Friedrich Nietzsche. Near the middle of The Anti-Christ , Nietzsche mocked Ernst Renan?s life of Jesus for attempting to convince the world that Jesus was a ?hero.?E Nothing, Nietzsche said, was less evangelical than heroism, for ?What the Gospels make instinctive is precisely the reverse of all heroic struggle, of all taste for conflict: the very incapacity for resistance is here converted into something moral: (?resist not evil!?E?Ethe most profound sentence in the Gospels, perhaps the true key to them), to wit, the blessedness of peace, of gentleness, the inability to be an enemy.?E

While Nietzsche meant this as an attack on Christianity, many Christians would agree, and see it as one of the chief virtues of Christianity that it deprives men of the ability to be an enemy. Liberal theology means many things, but one of its central themes is the denial of enmity, and especially the denial that God has enemies. On this score, however, ?conservative?Eevangelicals are on the same page as liberals. Nowhere is this more evident than in hymnody, always a key barometer of theology and piety. As Mr. Wilson has pointed out, for someone raised on nineteenth-century revival hymns, the most surprising thing about the Psalms is the prominence of enemies, and the Psalmist?s militant reaction to them. For many Christians, Nietzsche?s description is precisely accurate.

At NSA, we have attempted to train you to take a different stance in life. We have taught you to expect enmity, and we hope that we have given you the rudimentary skills to be an enemy, and an effective one.

Eliminating the category of ?enmity?Efrom social and political theory has been one of the grand projects of modernity. Liberal political imagination, inspired by Kant?s 1795 treatise on perpetual peace as well as by Locke and Adam Smith, insists that men rationally to achieve their own interests. An enemy who seeks to harm even against his own best interests is a surd, a pure irrationalism. Liberalism can make no sense of the enemy. ?Liberalism,?ECarl Schmitt wrote, ?has attempted to transform the enemy from the viewpoint of economics into a competitor and from the intellectual point of view into a debating adversary.?E Sociology and anthropology re-imagine the ?enemy?Eas the ?outsider?Eor the ?stranger,?Eas a member of an ?out-group,?Ewhile postmodern philosophy is obsessed with the ?other.?E Economists have offered a ?heaven on earth?Ethrough rising standards of living or through expansion of trade, and this earthly heaven is a heaven of peace: Put a MacDonald?s and a Gap in every major Middle Eastern city, and terrorism will drown in a wave of Happy Meals.

When liberal modernity has not simply ignored the existence of the enemy, it has denied the existence of enmity that cannot be cajoled, coopted, convinced, or smilingly coerced to become an ally. Strangely, it is not just abstract theorists who hope for a world without enemies, but politicians, even in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11 and the Madrid bombings earlier this year. In his highly acclaimed little book, Of Paradise and Power , Robert Kagan notes that after World War II, “European strategic culture” set out on a program of “conscious rejection of the European past, a rejection of the evils of European Machtpolitik.” As Joschka Fischer, Germany’s Foreign Minister, puts it, “The core of the concept of Europe after 1945 was and still is a rejection of the European balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic ambitions of individual states that had emerged following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.”

What makes this proposal so attractive is that it has a track record of notable successes. Kagan notes that “it is the integration and taming of Germany that is the great accomplishment of Europe ?Eviewed historically, perhaps the greatest feat of international politics ever achieved . . . . European life during the more than five decades since the end of World War II has been shaped not by the brutal laws of power politics but by the unfolding of a geopolitical fantasy, a miracle of world-historical importance: The German lion has lain down with the French lamb.” This was accomplished through “diplomacy, negotiations, patience, the forging of economic ties, political engagement, the use of inducements rather than sanctions, compromise rather than confrontation, the taking of small steps and tempering ambitions for success.” And this is not to mention the remarkably peaceful dissolution of the Soviet bloc, and more recent efforts to reintegrate those nations with Western Europe.

Giddy with these achievements, Europeans have taken it as their mission to lead the world into a global post-modern version of Kant’s perpetual peace. If Germany and France could be cajoled into peace, why not Palestinian and Jew, Iraqi and Iranian, North Korean and South Korean: “The extension of the European miracle to the rest of the world,?EKagan says, ?has become Europe’s new civilizing mission.” It is the new ?White Man?s Burden.?E

To some extent, this theoretical and practical removal of enmity is a product of the gospel and the culture of the gospel that we call Christendom, for the foundation of Christendom was the destruction of ancient enmities. Yet, it simply will not do for Christians to ignore the reality of enmity. Eliminate enemies from the biblical story, and you eliminate most of the biblical story. Certainly, you delete the early chapters of the story. As soon as Yahweh had placed Adam in the garden and given him a bride to protect, the conditions were set for enmity. And immediately, there was an enemy at the gate ?Ethe enemy ?Eseducing and tempting and breathing threats. Enmity arises before the fall, and Adam?s sin from one angle is his inability to recognize an enemy or, more accurately, his refusal to be an enemy.

Enmity only intensified after the fall, as God Himself had told Adam. You cannot read far in the Psalms before you encounter David?s enemies: O Lord, how my adversaries have increased; many are rising up against me (Psalm 3). O Lord, lead me in Thy righteousness because of my foes; make Thy way straight before me (Psalm 5). My eye is wasted away with grief; it has become old because of all my adversaries (Psalm 6). Save me from all those who pursue me and deliver me, let he tear my soul like a lion (Psalm 7). When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish b
efore Thee (Psalm 9). And that is all within the first 10 of 150 Psalms. Nor is enmity a harsh Old Testament notion; the New Testament repeatedly speaks of enemies of the cross and enemies of Christ and enemies of the church (Phil 3:18; 13:10; 2 Thess 3:15), and no OT passage is quoted more often in the NT than Psalm 110, which promises that Christ?s enemies will be subdued beneath His feet.

Far from deleting enmity from history, in fact, Christianity immeasurably deepens it. Nietzsche pointed to this, though in a typically distorted fashion, when he compared the classical notion of ?noble adversaries?Eto the biblical conception of ?evil adversaries.?E The pagan ?desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor!?E Ajax and Hector fight to a standoff on the windy plains of Troy, and then remove their armor and exchange gifts to formalize a friendship. Plutarch?s treatise on ?How To Profit By One?s Enemy?Ebreathes a similar spirit, though in a more philosophical idiom. Classical enmity was functional, strategic, temporary, and superficial. For ancient heroes, enmity always played out under a canopy of basic agreement; battles were fought under the aegis of a code of honor to which both sides adhered, but there was no battle over the code.

Christianity and postmodernism agree in this: No such universal canopy exists.
As a result, for the Christian there can be no compromise with the enemy, but only battle until victory. Can anyone imagine Moses combating Pharaoh through eight plagues, and then calling it all off and moving back into Pharaoh?s palace? Can anyone imagine David and Goliath fighting to a draw, and then going off to share a pint? We might as well imagine Jesus dining with the devil after His temptations in the wilderness. Pagans were happy to incorporate any new god into the Pantheon, including Jesus; but Paul asks, What harmony has Christ with Belial?

However much the modern assault on enmity owes to the influence of the gospel, it is ultimately and fundamentally a perversion of the gospel. The church?s refusal to shoulder the burden of enmity is another sign of our worldliness, our conformity to modernity. And, as James says, this love of the world, like all love of the world, makes us enemies of God.

Few writers have perceived the importance of this ?battle for and against enmity?Emore clearly than the German Catholic political theorist Carl Schmitt, a Nazi apologist who has ironically become a popular writer in some leftist circles in recent years. For Schmitt, the political realm is defined by the opposition of friend and enemy, just as the aesthetic realm is structured by the opposition of the beautiful and the ugly and the moral realm by the opposition of good and evil.

Schmitt?s emphasis on enmity grew out of explicitly theological assumptions. Recognizing that Satan is the great adversary for Christians, Schmitt pointed out that Satan is a master of deception and disguise, and the greatest deception must be the promise of the end of enmity. Schmitt?s position has been summarized as follows: ?how could the Old Enemy prepare his victory more cunningly than by making men forget the enmity that is sown between him and them, and how would such forgetting be brought about with greater prospects of success than through the promotion of the errant faith that they no longer had any enemies or that without exception they are well on their way of getting rid of them? How could he disguise himself more perfectly than by disavowing enmity and proclaiming its conquest??E This temptation, the modern liberal temptation, must be resisted as strenuously as any temptation; and ?whoever wants to withstand Satan must insist on enmity.?E The battle for or against enmity is, Schmitt believed, ?the political ?theological criterion of the highest order.?E Those who wish to eliminate enmity are our enemies. Strange as it sounds to Christian ears, we must stand FOR enmity and against all theoretical and practical projects to eliminate it.

All projects, of course, but one. If Kant, Adam Smith, Locke, and the other founders of liberal international order pursue a secular elimination of enmity, postmoderns inspired by Schmitt and others insist on enmity without hope of reconciliation. Neither of these is a Christian option, for we proclaim a gospel that announces the breaking down of the dividing wall and of enmity between Jew and Gentile. Crucially, however, this project is not based on d?tente, on negotiations, on diplomacy. The wall of enmity is destroyed because the enemy is destroyed. Enmity is eliminated because the enemy is eliminated. Now is the judgment of this world. Now is the prince of this world cast out.

Equally crucial is the fact that this destruction of enmity takes place through the cross. Lee Harris has recently written a fascinating book about the enemies of civilization that threaten America and the West. He points out that civilization depends on the renunciation of ruthless violence, and the determination to resolve disputes without recourse to war. Civilization simply is the order that results from this renunciation, and from the trust that others have made the same commitment. And it works: We can put our money in a bank run by total strangers, and still find it there a month later. We can take our car to the mechanic, and he doesn?t make off with it. We can go to the barber for a shave, confident that he won?t cut our throat.

But this renunciation of violence puts civilized societies at a disadvantage, because ruthless people remain at large, people who will stop at nothing, even death, to destroy civilization. To the extent that civilized societies are truly civilized ?Ethat is, truly based on a renunciation of violence ?Eto that extent they are tempted to forget that not everyone is so civilized. The only way that civilization can survive, it seems, is through preserving pockets of ruthlessness for its own defense. Civilized society thus paradoxically depends on the very ruthlessness it fundamentally renounces.

According to Harris, the characteristic of the ruthless is their willingness to die to achieve their aims. But Harris ignores another type of historical character who is fearless in the face of death: The martyr. Ultimately, given the inevitability of enmity, there are only two ethical and political options, apart from sheer resignation in the face of the enemy, which is not an ethic that can found or sustain a civilization. Civilization can ride on the broad shoulders of the ruthless; or it can arise from the blood of the martyrs.

With Kant and all moderns, we Christians look forward with hope to the end of enmity. Against them, we look to the end of enmity only through the paradoxical victory of the cross. Just as Jesus ?abolished in His flesh?Ethe enmity on the cross, so Christians are called to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to abolish enmity. You graduates know that, despite the fact that you are attractive, clean, well-groomed, and cheerful, you will be hated, insulted, persecuted, slandered, and perhaps even by those who you have thought friends. Do not be surprised at this. But above all, do not choose the path of the ruthless but the path of the martyr, the path laid out by Paul:

Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. If possible, as much as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And this is the path of Jesus: I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and t
he good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Thank you.

Theology

Previous Post

May 11, 2004

Herod and Pilate

Next Post

May 13, 2004 Sermon Outline, May 16

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1-2 Samuel 1968 Abelard Abortion Abraham Acedia AD 70 Adam Smith Addiction Advent Advertising Aeneid Aesthetics Africa African Christianity African Church African religion Age Aging Agriculture Airline industry Alabama Alasdair MacIntyre Albania Alcohol Allegory Alms Alternative Medicine Ambrose America American Christianity American culture American economy American Evangelicals American Foreign Policy American history American Literature American Military American Politics American Religion American Revolution Anagogy Analytic Philosophy Anamnesis Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient history Ancient Near East Ancient Religion Angels Anglican Church Anglicanism Animism Anointing of the Sick Anselm Anthropology Anthropomorphism anti-Catholicism Antiquities Antonio Lopez apocalypse Apocalyptic Apocalyptic language Apostles Creed Aquinas Archeology Architecture Arianism Aristotle Ark of the Covenant Art Art History Ascension Aseity Assurance Athanasius Atheism Athens atonement Attention Attributes Augustine Austin Farrer Authority autonomy Avant-garde Awe Bach Ballooning Balzac Banking Bankruptcy Baptism Baptists Baseball Basketball Bavinck Beatitudes Beauty Behavioral Economics Being Benedict XVI Benjamin Benjamin Franklin Beowulf Berkeley Bernie Sanders Bertrand Russell Bestiary Bible Bible - criticism Bible - NT Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians Bible - NT - 1 John Bible - NT - 1 Peter Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians Bible - NT - 2 Peter Bible - NT - Acts Bible - NT - Colossians Bible - NT - Ephesians Bible - NT - Galatians Bible - NT - Gospels Bible - NT - Hebrews Bible - NT - James Bible - NT - John Bible - NT - Jude Bible - NT - Luke Bible - NT - Mark Bible - NT - Matthew Bible - NT - Paul Bible - NT - Philippians Bible - NT - Revelation Bible - NT - Romans Bible - NT - Thessalonians Bible - NT - Timothy Bible - OT Bible - OT - Amos Bible - OT - Chronicles Bible - OT - Daniel Bible - OT - Deuteronomy Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Bible - OT - Esther Bible - OT - Exodus Bible - OT - Ezekiel Bible - OT - Ezra-Nehemiah Bible - OT - Genesis Bible - OT - Habakkuk Bible - OT - Hosea Bible - OT - Isaiah Bible - OT - Jeremiah Bible - OT - Job Bible - OT - Joel Bible - OT - Jonah Bible - OT - Joshua Bible - OT - Judges Bible - OT - Kings Bible - OT - Lamentations Bible - OT - Leviticus Bible - OT - Malachi BIble - OT - Micah Bible - OT - Nehemiah Bible - OT - Numbers Bible - OT - Pentateuch Bible - OT - Proverbs Bible - OT - Psalms Bible - OT - Ruth Bible - OT - Samuel Bible - OT - Song of Songs Bible - OT - Torah Bible - OT - Zechariah Bible - OT - Zephaniah Biblical Law Biblicism Billy Graham biography Biology Biololgy Biotechnology Blasphemy Blindness Blog news Blogging Blogroll Bloomsbury Group Bob Dylan Body Body symbolism Boethius Boko Haram Bonhoeffer Book of Common Prayer Books Botany Boundary Brexit Britain British History British Politics Bruce Springsteen Buddhism Bureaucracy Burial Business C. S. Lewis C. S. Peirce Calendars Caliphate Calvin calvinism Camille Paglia Canon Capitalism Cappadocians Carl Schmitt Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Catholicity Causation cemeteries Cervantes Charism Charismata Charity Charles Dickens Charles Hodge Charles Simeon Charles Taylor Charles Williams Chaucer Chermistry Chess Chesterton Chiasm children China Chinese Exclusion Act Chivalry Chopin Chretien de Troyes Christendom Christian Democracy Christian reconstruction Christianity in Britain Christianization Christmas Christology Chronology Church church and state Church architecture Church Calendar Church history Church of England Church Year Cicero Circumcision Cities City of God Civil Religion Civil Society Civil War Civility Classical Theism Classics Climate Change Clothing Coleridge Colloquy of Marburg Colonialism Color Comedy Comenius Commodity Communio Communism Community Comparative religions Computer Science Confederacy Confessionalization Conflict Congregations consciousness Consecration Conservatism Constantine Constitution consumerism Contra Faustum Conversion Coriolanus Cormac McCarthy Cosmology Cosmopolitanism Council of Trent Counter-culture Counter-insurgency Courage Courtly love Covenants Crafts Craftsmanship Cranach Creation Creativity Creator-creature Credit Crime Crime and Punishment Crisis Critical scholarship Criticism Cross Cubism Cultural theory Culture Culture War Dance Daniel Dennett Dante Darwin Dave Eggers David David Foster Wallace David Hume David Jones Deadly sins Death Debt Dechristianization Decolonization Deconstruction Defoe Deja vu Democracy Denis de Rougemont Denominationalism Derrida Descartes Developmental psychology Devils Diocletian Discipleship Disenchantment Disgust Diversion Diversity Divine energies Divine Impassibility Divine Simplicity Divine Warrior Doctrine dogma Dominion Donald Trump Dostoevsky Douglas Campbell Douglas Farrow Dreams Dualism Durkheim Dystopia E.M. Forster Early Christianity Early Modern Europe Easter Eastern Europe Eastern Orthodoxy Ecclesiology Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Eden Edgar Allan Poe Edmund Spenser Education Egypt Election Elites Emergence Emma Emotion Empire England English History English Reformation Enlightenment Entertainment Entrepreneur environmentalism Envy Epic Epiphany Episcopals Epistemology Epistles Equality Erasmus Ernst Kantorowicz Eros Eschatology Eternity Ethics Eucharist Europe Evangelicalism Evangelicals and Catholics Together Events Evil Evolution Exile Face Fairie Queene Fairy Tales Faith family Family and Marriage Fantasy Farming Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Fear Femininity Feminism Fertility Fetishization Feud Feudalism Feuerbach Fiction Figs Film Finance Finland Fire Flag Flags Flannery O'Connor Flood myths Folly Food football Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreknowledge Forgiveness Foucault Fracking France Francois Mauriac Franz Rosenzweig free will Freedom Freedom of God French Revolution Freud Funerals Future G. K. Chesterton Gambling Gaming Gay Marriage Gender gender identity Genealogy Geography George Berkeley George Eliot George Herbert; Poetry George Romanes Gerald Manley Hopkins Germany Gethsemane Gift Gifts Giorgio Agamben Global Christianity Global economics Globalism Globalization Glorious Revolution Gnosticism God's sovereignty Gods Goethe Golf Good Friday Gospel Gospels Gothic Gothic architecture Grace Grammar Gramsci Gratitude Greek Literature Greek Philosophy Greek Religion Greek Science Gregory of Nyssa Guillermo del Toro H. Richard Niebuhr Haiku hair Hamann Hamlet Handicap Handles Hands Hans Urs von Balthasar Happiness Harold Bloom Harper Lee Harvest healing Heaven Heavenly treasure Heavenly treasure Hebrew Bible Hebrew language Hegel Heidegger Hell Hellenism; Judaism; Revelation Henri de Lubac heresy Herman Dooyeweerd Hermeneutics Herod Heroic Heroism Hesiod Hidegard of Bingen Hierarchy Hieronymus Bosch Historicism Historiography History History - Early Modern History - Middle Ages Hoaxes Hobbes Holiness Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Home Homeless Homer Homosexuality Honor hope Horror Hospitality Housing Hugh of St. Victor Human Rights Humanism Humor hylomorphism Hymns Hypocrisy. Iago Iconoclasm Identity Ideology Idleness Idolatry Iliad Images Imagination Immigrant churches Immigrant Religion Immigration Imperialism Improvization Imputation Incarnation Incest India Individualism Indonesia Inequality Inerrancy Infant Baptism Infant mortality Infanticide Ingratitude Innovation Inspiration Institutions Insult Intellectual History Intellectuals Intelligent Design International Politics Internet Intimacy IQ Iran Iran-Iraq War Iraq Ireland Irony Islam Islamic State Islamism Ismail Kadare Israel Ivan Illich J. Gresham Machen J.N. Figgis Jacob Jacques Lacan James Bond James Jordan James Joyce James KA Smith James Wood Jane Austen Jane Jacobs Jealousy Jed Perl Jeff Koons Jeroboam Jesus Jewish War 66-70 AD Jihad Johann Georg Hamann Johannine Epistles John Ashbery John Behr John Bunyan John Calvin John Donne John Frame John Howard Yoder John Knox John Milbank John Milton John Owen John Rawls John Ruskin John Stuart Mill John the Baptist John Webster John Wesley John Williamson Nevin Jonathan Edwards Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Conrad Joseph Ratzinger Journalism Joy Judaism Judaize Judgment Judith Butler Jurgen Moltmann Justice Justification Kalevala Kant Karl Barth Karl Marx Karl Polanyi Karl Rahner Kazakhstan Kazuo Ishiguro Kenneth Lonergan Kierkegaard King Lear Kingdom of God Kitsch Knighthood Knowledge Korea Labor movement Lactantius Lamech Lament Landscape Language Latin America Laughter Law Law and Punishment Leftism Lent Les Murray Levi-Strauss Levites Leviticus Liber Mundi Liberal arts Liberal Theology Liberalism Light Lighthouse Linguistics LIstening Literacy Literary structure Literature Liturgics Liturgy Locke Logic Love Luther Lutheran Lutheranism Lying Lytton Strachey Macbeth Machiavelli Machines Madness Mainline Manhattan Manicheanism Manners Manufacturing Manuscripts Mao Zedong Maps Marcion Marilynne Robinson Marketing Marriage Martha Nussbaum Martin Bucer Martin Chemnitz Martyrdom Marx Marxism Mary Mary Douglas masculinity Mass Materialism Mathematics Maundy Thursday Max Weber Media Mediation Medication Medicine Medieval Church Medieval exegesis Medieval Literature Medieval theology Medieval Thought Medievalism Memory Merchant of Venice Mesopotamian Religion Messianic Metaphor Metaphysics Methodist Mexican-American War Michel de Montaigne Michel Faber Middle Ages Middle East Midwifery Mikhail Bulgakov Military Millennium Mind Miracles Miscellaneous Mission missionaries Mixed constitution Modern self modernism Modernity monasticism Monotheism Monroe Doctrine Monsters Montaigne's Essays Moral philosophy Mormonism Moses Mother Teresa Motherhood Motive Mount of Olives Movies Multiculturalism Murder Music Musicals Mutability Mutability Mystery Mysticism myth N. T. Wright Narrative Nation-State Nationalism Natural Law Natural-Supernatural Nature Nature and culture Nature and Grace Nazi Nazirite Necrophilia Nero Nestorianism Neuroscience Nevin Lectures New Atheism New Testament New York City Newbigin News NGOs Nibelungenlied Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Lyra Nietzsche Nigeria Nihilism Nobel Prize Nobility Nominalism Norbert Elias Norman MacCaig nostalgia Novels Numerology Obama Objectivity and subjectivity Occasionalism Odysseus Oil Old Testament Oliver O'Donovan Ontology Origen original sin Orthodoxy Othello Owen Barfield Pacifism Pactum salutis Paedocommunion Paganism Pain Painting Paleoconservatism Palm Sunday Pannenberg Parenting Pascal Passions Passivity Pastoral Care Pastoral theology Patrick Modiano Patristics Patronage Paul Peace of God Peace of Westphalia Penal substitution Pentecost Pentecostalism Perichoresis Pericles Persecution Person Peter Peter Enns Petrarch Philip K. Dick Philip Melanchthon Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of History Philosophy of language Philosophy of science Phone booth Photography Physics Pictures Pierre Bourdieu Place Planned Parenthood Plants plato Play Plot Plotinus Pluralism Pneumatology Poetics poetry Poetry & Stories Poland police Political Philosophy Political theology Political Theory Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Popular Culture Populism Pornography Porphyry Post-Colonial Theory Post-Structuralism Postmodernism Postmodernity Potential Poverty Power Practice Pragmatism Prayer Preaching Predestination Prediction Prehistory Premillennialism Presbyterian Priesthood Prince Charles Prison Reform privacy Private Prodigal Son Progress Progressivism Property Prophecy Prophet Propitiation Prosperity gospel Prostitution Protectionism Protestantism Providence Prudentius psalms Pseudo-Dionysus Psychological Warfare Psychology Public intellectual Public Life Public Philosophy Public Theology Publishing Punk Rock Pure nature Puritanism Purity Pushkin Putin Pythagoreanism R.J. Rushdoony Race Racism Radical Orthodoxy Rape Rationality Reactionary reading Realism Reason Red State Blue State Reformation Reformational Catholicism Reformational Philosophy Reformed theology refugees reinhold niebuhr Relationality Relativism Relics Religion Religion and science Religions Religious Freedom Religious Liberty Religious Right Renaissance Rene Girard Republican Party Resurrection Resurrection. Revelation Revelations Revenge Revivalism Revolution rhetoric Richard Flannagan Richard II Richard III Richard Wagner Richard Wilbur Righteousness Ritual Robert Frost Robert Herrick Robert Jenson Robert Mugabe Robert Spaemann Robinson Crusoe Rock n' Roll Rod Dreher Rodin Roman Catholicism Roman Empire Roman Religion Romance Romanticism Rome Rootedness Rosenstock-Huessy Rousseau Rowan Williams Rural America Russia Russian literature Russian Orthodoxy Rusty Reno Rwanda S. Y. Agnon Sabbath Sacrament Sacramental theology Sacraments Sacred Sacred Space Sacrifice saints Salt Sam Harris Same-sex marriage Sanctuary Satan Satire Saudi Arabia Scapegoat Scarcity Schism Schleiermacher Scholarship Science Science and Theology Science Fiction Scopes trial Scotland Scott Adams Scott Cairns Scottish Reformation Scotus Scripture and tradition sculpture Sea Second temple Secularism Secularization Self-Help Self-trust Semiotics Semper reformanda separation of church and state Sermon on the Mount Sex Sex Trafficking Sexual abuse Sexual Politics Sexual Revolution Sexuality Shakespeare Shame Culture Shema Sherlock Shopping Silence Simone Weil Simplicity Simpsons Sin Sincerity Sixties Skepticism Slavery Slavoj Zizek Sleep Sloth Social capital Social change Social Imaginary Social Science Socialism Socialization Sociology Sociology of Knowledge Sociology of Religion Sola scriptura Sonnets Sophocles Soteriology Soviet Union Space Spain Speculation Spinoza Spirit Sport Sports Star Trek State State-formation Stephen Masty Steven Bannon Strangers Structuralism structure Subject-object Substitution Suburbs Suffering Suicide Super-Rich Superheroes Supersessionism Supplication Supreme Court Surveillance Symbol Synagogue Taberancle Tabernacle Tax Taxes Tears Technology Teens Teleology Television Temple Ten Commandments Terence Terrence Malick Terrorism Thanksgiving The South The West Theodore Roosevelt Theogony Theological Education Theological Language Theology Theology - Anthropology Theology - Christology Theology - Covenant Theology - Creation Theology - Ecclesiology Theology - Eschatology Theology - Liturgical Theology - Pneumatology Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity Theology proper Theopolis Theopolis Institute Theosis Theresa May Thomas A. Clark Thomas Aquinas Thomas Carlyle Thomas Mann Threshing Thucydides Time Tocqueville Tolerance Toleration Tolstoy Tom Wolfe Tools Torah Torture Toscanini Totalitarianism Trade Tradition Tragedy Transhumanism Translation Transubstantiation Travel Trees Trinitarianism Trinity Trinity House Tristan Troilus and Creysede Trump Trump Truth Turkey Twelfth Night Two Kingdoms Typology Ukraine Ulysses Uncanny Uncategorized Uniform Union with Christ United States Unity University Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Value Vatican II Vengeance Vico Victorian Age Victorian Literature Vienna Violence Virgil Virgin Birth Virginia Woolf Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Solovyev Vladimir Solovyov W.H. Auden Walls Walt Disney Walt Whitman Walter Benjamin Walter Lippmann War Wars of Religion Washington DC Wealth Weddings Will William Carlos Williams William Gilpin William Golding Wine Wisdom wonder Word of God Wordsworth Work Works World Council of Churches World History World War I World War II Worldview Worship Wrath Writing Youth Youth Ministry Yuja Wang Yves Congar Zimbabwe Zwingli Zygmunt Bauman

Select a Month January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

According to Titus, what appeared to all people, bringing salvation?

Select your answer to see how you score.

God's mercy The gospel Jesus Christ The grace of God