Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Click HERE for part 1. III This leads to a further question. I have argued that silence cannot by itself establish a Scriptural principle, but does Scripture’s silence carry any weight in itself? Does the fact that something is unbiblical in a weak sense tell us anything at all? In…
Although nowadays gap theories are associated with dispensationalism, it was not always so. In the nineteenth century, scholars from a variety of backgrounds (Anglican, Reformed, and proto-fundamentalist) seem to have become fascinated by gaps. If you are not familiar with what I am talking about, this newsletter will acquaint you…
If the debate over Operation Rescue has proven anything, it has proven that there is absolutely no consensus among evangelicals in general, or among "reconstructionists" in particular, about how to use the Bible to judge political actions and movements. Each side of the debate claims biblical authority for its position,…
Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?"…
Umberto Eco’s "The Name of the Rose" was certainly one of the best literary works of the past decade, though the film version hardly measured up to it. Now Eco has given us a new novel, "Foucault’s Pendulum." Like Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum reflects on the limitations of human knowledge, and…
From time to time people ask me about "interpretive maximalism." They want to know what it is, and sometimes want to know if it represents some departure from the Reformed grammatico-historical, Biblico-theological approach to the Bible. I have something of a problem with these questions, because "interpretive maximalism" is not…
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Daniel Barber ( Modern Theology ) notes that “particularity cannot be reduced to universality. Therefore we have a philosophical reason for approaching Jesus through particularity: sufficient reason, when conceived as universality, is insufficient; causal frameworks cannot negotiate sufficiently with elements of chance and contingency; ‘universality’ cannot be thought of as…
Andrew Bacevich ( The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War ) writes, “Americans in our time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the…
Howe, again, points out that the most obvious “imperial” project in US history is the one we take most for granted, the conquest of the American continent: “it is the internal expansion of the continental USA, across the intervening hundred years, which evokes the most direct parallels with empire-building elsewhere.…
Stephen Howe ( Empire: A Very Short Introduction ) admits that nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian empire “scorned it as the ‘prison-house of nations,” and that to the intellectuals of Vienna, the empire was “a senile absurdity.” Still, “the very existence of those nationalist, cultural, and intellectual movements, able to express…
Gerald Schlabach notes that critiques of Constantinianism pose temptations of various sorts, just as Constantinianism itself does. Insofar as such critiques posit a “fall” for the church, “they tend to be dysfunctional - not just for ecumenical debate, but also for ethical discernment within those churches that historically have defined…
Travis Kroeker ( Journal of Religious Ethics , 2005) argues that Yoder is closer to Augustine than his dismissal of Augustine as a “Constantinianism” implies: “Augustine’s theological corpus is nothing if not exegetical and historical, though, of course, it is also true that Augustine freely appropriates the ‘gold and silver…
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