Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
Showing page 249 of 309
Showing page 10 of 43
In Rune 40 of the Finnish epic, Kalevala , the hero, Wainamoinen, is sailing with his friends to Pohjola, where he intends to recover the Sampo, a talisman of good luck and extraordinary, mysterious power. No one today quite knows what the Sampo was, but many of the episodes of…
Chaucer, like Shakespeare after him, set some of his poems in ancient Greece. The “Knight's Tale” takes place in Athens, ruled by the same “Duke” Theseus who rules Athens in Midsummer Nights Dream . Troilus and Cresyde is a Trojan love tragedy. Neither of these works, however, shows much deep…
According to C. S. Lewis ( English Literature in the Sixteenth Century , 27-28), English humanists were most interested in style, but the style was mostly Latin: “Greek was given abundance of ‘mouth honor,’ but only the minor Greek authors (Plutarch, Heliodrous, Chilles Tatius, the Anthology) were really relished. Greek…
Emily, the lady-love of Chaucer's “Knight's Tale,” the first of the Canterbury Tales, appears in a garden, and the poet describes her as if where were part of the garden. She is Eve in Eden. But this is no Edenic world. The men who see her are locked out of…
Tragic stories are fall stories. Whether through moral wrong or through some inadvertent hamartia , the tragic hero falls from a high place. Others are engulfed in the tragedy to one extent or another, but not everyone. Those who watch can experience the catharsis of pity and fear by watching…
C S. Lewis describes the formation of medieval allegorism in his classic Allegory of Love . He begins by distinguishing between an allegorical and a sacramental or symbolic turn of mind. Allegory begins, he says, with “an immaterial fact, such as the passions which you actually experience” and finds ways…
Showing page 434 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
