Since the first edition of Peter Brown’s magisterial Augustine of Hippo: A Biography in 1967, interest in the life, work, and thought of Saint Augustine has exploded across Catholic and Protestant circles, and across large swaths of the university disciplines. This is a welcome revival, in my view, for at least three reasons. First, in…

I believe the Bible testifies that humans could die before the fall, and I also believe contemporary evolutionary science potentially suggests humans were dying before the fall ever could have happened. But I also believe that Christian theology (in light of Holy Scripture) has always made important links between the fall, human sin, and death…

Different views on creation in the church today are often summarized in terms of whether one takes the biblical creation story “literally.” Similarly, Augustine’s crowning achievement on the doctrine of creation was, as we have noted, the production of a “literal” commentary on Genesis 1-3. Yet what Augustine means by “literal” is quite different from…

From conversion to death, Augustine was captivated by Genesis 1–3. He kept writing and re-writing commentaries on these chapters, and they pop up his other works as well (many have noticed, often with puzzlement, that even the Confessions climax into an exegesis of Genesis 1). Then, for 15 years, he labored on a kind of…

Sometimes Christians treat Genesis 1-3 as a kind of prolegomenon to the biblical narrative. These chapters are important, it is thought, primarily to set the stage for the real business of Christian theology—those issues involved in the doctrine of redemption. Moreover, when we do engage the theology of creation more directly, our interest tends to…

Imagine a young man in his late teen years. He has recently moved to the city to go to school. In the course of his study, he becomes convinced that Genesis 1 is no longer consistent with the most sophisticated intellectual trends of the day. He rejects the Christian faith in which he was raised,…

In Adam’s fall we sinned all. In spite of what this well-known pithy summary of the Christian doctrine of original sin might suggest, things are a bit more complicated. Daniel Houck will be joining the Creation Project in the second year as a research fellow to explore how the thought of Thomas Aquinas provides helpful…

Augustine (A.D. 354-430), the “Doctor of Grace” from north Africa, is arguably the most significant theologian in the Western tradition. He had once been a Manichee, during which time he would have affirmed a kind of good vs. evil dualism, as well as seeing matter as evil, and seeing creation as an act of necessity….

Keen for the Fire “Unless you’re bitten by the fire,” the angel at the top of the mountain shouts joyfully, but Dante, understandably, balks at being called to pass through a wall of flame. Dramatically, he says “I was like a corpse put in the grave, / the words I heard so touched my heart…

Reading Journal Home << Previous Entry Next entry >> Horrible Visions (Canto XXV) Cantos XXV and XXVI move quickly from thought to thought such that you can almost miss what holds the episodes together, which is the transgression of right order or proper boundaries. They both feature the poetic modesty we saw at the beginning of…

Emerging adults often have their focus directed squarely upon the future. Parents and other concerned adults regularly ask them about the five and ten-year plans they are devising for adulthood. They are preparing for a future career and, at least potentially, a future spouse and children. They develop dreams of what they hope to be and…

Recently, I had a conversation with one of my sons who works in the realm of public policy engagement. The focus of our discussion was how Christians should engage public debates particularly as it relates to values and convictions. We both agreed that convictions could be shared in public debate though tempered with wisdom that…