Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Imagine driving up to Canada and stopping at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. While you’re sitting at the table, an enthusiastic young man comes over to you and says in an excited voice, "Are you an American?" You reply, "Yes, I am." "Wonderful! I have so little…
1 O Lord Almighty, God of our fathers, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous posterity; 2 You who have made heaven and earth with all their order; 3 who have shackled the sea by Your word ofcommand, who have confined the deep and sealed it with…
Part 1: 1When King Astyages was laid with his fathers, Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom. 2 And Daniel was a companion of the king, and was the most honored of his friends. 3Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day they spent on it twelve bushels…
This debate has been going on for some time. But with few exceptions, almost all explanations of Presbyterian church polity claim that a “church” (meaning a single local congregation) must be ruled by “a plurality of elders” of whom one may happen to teach and work full-time doing so. This…
I hope that those who are advocating reading more of the ancient, "classical" literature of the ancient, "classical" world, are also promoting the Apocrypha. I’m afraid that many Christians don’t realize what great literature much of the Apocrypha is. It is not, of course, inspired by God, and perhaps because…
PRESBYTERIANISM is a term referring to a system of government in the Church. It is commonly contrasted with Congregationalism and Episcopalianism. Presbyter is a Greek word that is translated as “elder” in our English New Testaments. Thus, Presbyterianism is commonly defined as “rule by elders.” This is a misleading definition.…
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Khaled Anatolios notes that Origen argued that “if God is eternally alighty, there must always be a creation over which God is sovereign.” Athanasius feels the force of the argument, but “transposes this line of reasoning to argue that if God is Creator, he must be eternally in possession of…
Those leading the assault on “classical theism” in recent decades has charged that the classical doctrine of God in Christian theology has reduced God to an impassive Stoic at best, and impersonal Substance at worst. Few can lay more direct claim to having founded “classical theism” than Athanasius, and yet…
In an extended discussion of the Christological import of Proverbs 8, Athanasius argues that the phrases “before the ages” and “before the mountains were set in place” refer to God’s preparation of the economy of grace: “Being himself good and the lover of humanity, he prepared beforehand the economy of…
Athanasius opposed to extrinicism in every form. Most obviously, he opposes the Arian effort to make the Son external to the Father and to the being of God. But that intrinsicism unfolds in an intrinsicist, christologically grounded soteriology. Why couldn’t God have sent a creature to save us? he presents…
In a proto-Wittgensteinian vein, Hamann wrote to Jacobi: “Metaphysics has its own school and court languages . . . and I am incapable of either understanding or making use of them. Hence I am close to suspecting that the whole of our philosophy consists more of language than of reason,…
In the Berlin-doesn’t-get-Hamann department, there’s also Berlin’s claim that for Hamann “existence logically precedes reason” and “there exists a pre-rational reality.” Not exactly. The world is there before we start reflecting on it; it’s got to be there for us to reflect on it. But for Hamann the real is…
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