Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
D. G. Hart’s The Lost Soul of American Protestantism vividly clarifies the differences between evangelical and Confessional Protestantism. In part the book is a manifesto for historians of American religion. Hart argues that historians of American Protestantism have operated with a simplistic binary contrast of evangelical/conservative v. liberal/progressive. At best,…
Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Idiot , like his other major works, is a complex evaluation of the human condition—a juxtaposition of the innate goodness and innate evil that resides within every human heart. There is much one can say about The Idiot . I am no specialist of Russian literature, or…
At risk of violating some secret handshake agreement on some important nuance to “natural law,” I will sum up what I understand in my own words. As far as I can tell natural law is supposed to be an area of knowledge that all people should be able to agree…
The first installment of this article may be found here . The Image of Man This brings us to a substitutionary atonement which we do understand, the fulfilment of the cruciform Tabernacle in the cross of Christ. Although Jesus’ execution was Physical and Social, it was primarily Personal . Beginning…
The first two essays in this series drew attention to the structure of the first part of Macbeth and to the way Shakespeare incorporates the Garden of Eden into his story. Macbeth , we saw, is a temptation story in which, compared to the Biblical story, the temptation itself is…
Revelation 19:6-9 Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, “Hallelujah! For theLord our God, the Almighty, reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him,…
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Biblical writers often use "text painting": the form of the text portrays the topic of the text. The first half of the flood narrative describes the rising waters, steadily raising the ark toward heaven. The second half describes the descending waters. At the center: "Yahweh remembered Noah" (Genesis 8:1). Rise,…
A response to Jordan Ballor’s review of my Creator , which was published at Acton.org on August 12. 1. Ballor says that, to avoid pantheism or panentheism, God’s identity as creator must be “relative, secondary, or conditional.” He rightly says that I argue the opposite: “God is Creator” is the…
Jonathan Edwards didn’t think the world is a machine. At the heart of the mechanistic interpretation of Newtonian physics, he discerned, was the notion that “bodies” are (in Robert Jenson’s words) “the sort of thing that either can or cannot act ‘properly by themselves.’” The mechanistic world picture involved an…
Joshua Jipp argues that Paul's Areopagus address contains both critique and propaganda, critique of Athenian superstition, lust for novelty, and idolatry, and propaganda in favor of Christian faith as a more consistent fulfillment of the aspirations of Hellenistic philosophical theology. Much of the critique, Jipp shows, is drawn from Isaiah's…
Cobbling together some notes for a lecture series, I was reminded of Seamus Heaney's little poem, " Anahorish ." The Gaelic name means “place of clear water,” as the first line indicates, and the etymology suggests a place of purity and innocence. Anahorish was near Heaney’s childhood home in County…
In an article in the Harvard Law Review from the early 1980s, Robert cover explores the relation of legal structure and narrative. His analysis has wide-ranging legal, political, and even theological import. Cover states the thesis early: We live in “normative universes,” social worlds that distinguish between right and wrong,…
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