Theologia et Vita

One of the more anachronistic mistakes people make when discussing the early church is imagining that the fathers operated with the same “Bible versus tradition” framework that dominates so many modern debates. They usually did not. In fact, the very men most frequently quoted by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians in defense of tradition were often equally emphatic about the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture. The tension is not nearly as neat as internet polemics make it sound. What the fathers faced was not a world where heretics denied Scripture altogether. Quite the opposite. Nearly every major heretical movement arrived carrying a Bible under its arm. Arius quoted Proverbs and John. Sabellius appealed to Scripture. The Donatists did the same. So did Pelagius. Even the Gnostics, bizarre as some of their cosmologies became, often wrapped themselves in biblical language. That created a real interpretive crisis. If everyone claims the Bible, how do you distinguish ap...

Abstract This essay examines the meaningfulness of theological language by tracing three classical positions on predication—equivocalism, univocalism, and analogical realism—and arguing that Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of analogy, understood within a Protestant framework shaped by Calvin's concept of divine accommodation, provides the most defensible account of how finite human language genuinely refers to God. The logical positivist challenge is taken as a clarifying provocation rather than a decisive refutation, and the essay demonstrates that contemporary theological concessions, particularly the claim that human speech about God carries an inherent degree of falsehood, reproduce the positivist error under the guise of creaturely humility. Drawing on the imago Dei grounding of language, patristic precedent, and the canonical presupposition that divine self-disclosure in human words is genuinely cognitive rather than merely evocative, the essay defends analogical realism as...

There’s a line tucked into Nehemiah 8 that has always felt like a job description more than a narrative detail. The scribes read from the Law, “explaining so that they [the people] understood the reading” (Neh. 8:8). Or as it’s often phrased, they were “giving the sense.” No rhetorical fireworks, no clever turns of phrase for their own sake. Just clarity. Careful, patient, almost stubborn clarity. And yet that’s the moment the people begin to weep, then rejoice. Not when the text is merely read, but when it is understood . It’s worth lingering there. The crowd in Jerusalem wasn’t hostile. They were hungry. Men, women, even children old enough to listen stood from early morning until midday. That’s five, six hours on their feet, under the open sky. What they needed wasn’t novelty. They needed the bridge between ancient words and present understanding. Language had shifted. Context had faded. The Law was still true, still authoritative, but it had to be opened up, unfolded, pressed into...