On "Faith in God and Christ"

August 18, 2025 Mark Brians

In reflecting on the first two of The 39 Articles of Religion, Oliver O’Donovan notes the curious way in which the biblical and creedal claims about Jesus offend our contemporary sensibilities. “Curiously” it is not the sheer statement that Jesus was divine or that God was in Christ or anything like that —many people are willing to admit as much (I remember watching a lecture in which Gregory Nagy referred to the historical transmission of the works of Homer as “divine” so its a fairly wide-ranging term). What offends the modern mind is “[t]he statement of Christ’s pre-existence as the eternal Word of the Father” (20). O’Donovan adds that “other difficulties” about Christology “appear no more than symptomatic.”

On making the sign of the cross

August 12, 2025 Mark Brians

*from "My Catholic Faith"(1949) by Louis La Ravoire Morrow. Public Domain courtesy of wikimedia commons.*

There are certain places in the liturgy where we are encouraged to make the sign of the cross (tracing the sign of the cross over ourselves from head to chest, and from shoulder to shoulder). Most frequently this occurs when we say the Triune name ("In the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"), or when we give or receive blessings.

This is not some random act of superstition but rather a proclamation that all blessing and power and hope and victory and divinity come to us through nothing other than the Cross of Jesus (Gal.6:14).

Worshiping like computers

August 4, 2025 Mark Brians

In last summer’s issue of Plough David Schaengold wrote a delicious essay entitled, “Computers Can’t Do Math.” It’s an excellent title: enticingly simple, provocative without crudity, almost naive but not quite. I commend the whole piece in its entirety.

For our purposes here, however, I will simply summarize a basic contention from the essay and reflect on its import for the Christian life…

A lily among thorns

July 28, 2025 Mark Brians

*p/c Santa Caterina del Sasso, by Wolfgang Sauber via wikimedia commons*

In chapter two of the Song of Solomon the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of the Vulgate, owing a bit to the idioms of Latin, is a bit stronger: lilium inter spinas. She is a lily set in a nest of spines. One cannot get at her without getting into the spines. Towards the end of the chapter the Lover says of her Beloved that they belong each to the other and that he willingly pastures, or “browses”, among the lilies which means also among the thorns.

What’s going-on? Why make this comparison? What’s more —what do the lovers of the Song mean by this?

Theopolis travelogue, summer 2025

July 21, 2025 Mark Brians

Friday, July 11

The whole Brians clan flew through the night out of HNL to PHX. Thank you for all who prayed for us! The kids were great —almost all of them slept. The craziest thing that happened was an altercation between two passengers that almost got the plane turned around mid-flight. Praise God that did not happen!

How to live through collapse

July 7, 2025 Mark Brians

Agamben suggests a similar thing is happening now: simultaneous hyper-expanison of techno-bureaucratic systems of control and governance and increasing despair about the average person’s role in those systems (e.g. trying to get IT assistance with the IRS help-desk, “look I’m trying to do the right thing and pay my taxes" can you just tell me how to reset my password?”).

The DeepReal in Le Carre's "The Little Drummer Girl"

June 30, 2025 Mark Brians

In the midst of this interview we get down to what one of my teachers, David Field, has dubbed “the DeepReal” —the honest pit of longing and desire at the center of the human person. The DeepReal is that place Freud and Jung were fond of making their targets; the Desert Fathers too. In that place is identity, affection, cravings, habits, idols, problems with Mom, issues with Dad, that-terrible-thing-i-did-that-day-that-ill-never-tell-anyone-about-ever, etc., and, importantly, God. Indeed, it is the very place to which the Lord descends in his salvation of us. He does not just apply gospel like a coat of exterior paint, or goatskin on Jacob’s arms. He goes all the way down to the DeepReal place.

About prophecy

June 24, 2025 Mark Brians

Often we are prone to think that what Biblical prophecies “do” in Scripture is to foretell future events, like “writing the news before it happens” or something. Under this kind of imagination, then, the only real differences between Biblical Prophecy and the palm reader at the local county fair are (1) accuracy, and (2) divine sanction. The Bible’s allowed to do it because it’s God doing it, and he’s reliable because he’s God. The fortune-teller, however, is neither reliable nor allowed to do it, even when they’re accurate. [INSERT summer-camp sermon about the witch of Endor].

Sabbath fire

June 17, 2025 Mark Brians

The connection with fire is not unimportant, it is not a scribal addition, nor is it a signal that what Moses is recording is a “stream of consciousness” mode of divine speech —like YHWH could have profited from cue cards. No. There is in the mind of YHWH a unique link between household fires being kindled and the sabbath. And though there are several things we could do with this link, there is one that I have become fixated on as of late…

YHWH against 24/7

June 9, 2025 Mark Brians

from *Sabbath Morn,* by Edward Robert Hughes (1851–1914)

…We use the concepts of “24” (hrs) and “7” (days a week) but under a regime of 24/7 those numbers become meaningless. What makes a week a week? Why stop counting at 24? What makes a day a day? Jonathan Crary notes that although “[c]onventional and older durational units persist (like “nine to five” or “Monday to Friday”)” theses are all ultimately subordinated to “all the practices of individual time management made possible by 24/7 networks and markets” (2014: 57)...

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