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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Yahweh speaks with the voice of many waters, and so does Jesus.  That means loud, but it also means that the voice is the source of life (cf. Numbers 20:11; 24:7; Ezekiel 17:5), like the abundant waters in the wilderness. Many waters cannot quench the flame of Love.  That is,…
“Set me as a seal upon your heart,” says the Bride to the Bridegroom. Now the priest wore stones with the names of the tribes “engraven like a seal” on his breastplate (Exodus 28:11, 21) and the name of Yahweh, also “engraven like a seal” on the golden plate on…
Erik Peterson ( Das Buch von den Engeln ) points out that the new song of Revelation 5 is sung by people from every tongue and nation and people.  Thus, “the hymn of the church is the transcending of all national hymns, as the speech of the church is the…
Hegel’s “sublation” seems to be a conceptual vestige of perichoresis. Sublation requires the Trinity: If all is one, nothing other can be absorbed within being destroyed.  If we have sheer differentiation, all is utterly other. Hegel is right: Sublation happens.  Aquinas does absorb Aristotle, so that Aristotle is still recognizably…
INTRODUCTION The Song of Songs is a love poem, but both Jewish and Christian readers have discerned that it’s something more than that.  Ultimately, the Song is nothing less than the gospel. THE TEXT “Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm for love is…
All history, Hegel says, is the death and resurrection of Jesus, the God’s embrace of negativity and death and their sublation in the resurrection.  This movement of incarnation, death, and death-nestled-in-resurrection is, moreover, the pattern of thought.  As Hegel says, “‘God himself is dead,’ it says in a Lutheran hymn,…
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