Religion

Regardless of the form they take, crises give rise to legitimate questions about God's providence: Where is God when we suffer? Has He forgotten us? Is He punishing us? Does He still have things under control?

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God...

Five hundred years ago, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. How are the motives that led to the Reformation viewed today?

His philosophy and theology dominated human thought for over a thousand years. Until Thomas Aquinas emerged in the 13th century, Augustine was undoubtedly the most important thinker of the medieval period.

As the rising sun brought life and light to the east coast of North America, it was greeted by a brisk autumn morning. Hurricane Erin was on the move in the Atlantic, creating heavy rainfall from Newfoundland to Bermuda. A cold front saved most of the eastern seaboard from the hurricane’s destruction and the resulting high-pressure front produced clear skies—perfect conditions for air travel.

Pope Leo XIV, who was born Robert Francis Prevost, was elected the 267th Supreme Pontiff. Born in the south of Chicago in 1955, he is the first North American pope. Despite this, his relationship with US politics is more complex than his biography might suggest.

The book of the Acts of the Apostles presents an encounter, supernaturally mediated by God, between Philip, one of the seven deacons, and an Ethiopian dignitary. When the Christian missionary met him, the Ethiopian eunuch was reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, one of the many Messianic prophecies, and asked Philip a question we often ignore: “Tell me, please, who is...

In a society with a pragmatic mindset, any kind of belief is subject only to practical judgments. Effectiveness, usefulness, and utility are the basic criteria by which actions, deeds or beliefs are valued.

Born of a virgin, brought up in humble conditions with phenomenal dignity, poor all throughout his life but desired as king by thousands, famous for healing the sick and raising the dead, the target of conspiracies of the highest officials, killed by crucifixion and resurrected after three days—Jesus Christ is at the centre of the most fabulous script ever to fall into the...

Back when I was a student, I heard this joke that, despite being funny, made me stop and think. It went something like this: a man starts hearing an "inner voice" telling him to sell his house, move to Bucharest, and use all the money to bet on a black 13 at roulette. The man complies without question because the voice spoke with...

The Bible has 66 books written by different authors over about 1,500 years. Is there a common theme, a leitmotif? If so, which is it? Is there an Old Testament God and a New Testament God?

The book written by John Ortberg, All the Places to Go... How Will You Know? invites us to reflect on the discerning of God’s will for our lives.

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

In the spring of 2022, I interviewed the venerable professor of Hebrew exegesis, Jacques Doukhan, for the second time. Ten years before, in our first interview, we discussed his life: his beginnings in a Jewish family in Constantine, Algeria, his studies in France, Switzerland and the United States, his work as a teacher and author. This time we talked about the study that...

Sometimes, I wonder what I would be like if I were more like Jesus. Above all, I wonder how He would act in my situation. I have to admit that these questions sometimes leave me feeling lost.