Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Our creeds, taking cues from Matthew 28:18-20 and other biblical texts, speak of the order of the Trinity as “Father, Son, Spirit.” This order is evident in the order of redemption as well: the Father sends the Son, who ascends to heaven to receive and send the Spirit. Luke 1,…
The category of “relation” has long been central to Trinitarian theology, [1] but in recent theology it has become a transcendental, as many theologians have argued that relationality is the leading feature not only of divine life but of created life. [2] Human beings made in the image of the…
Listen to Trinity House President Peter Leithart discuss his article on the End of Protestantism with LCMS pastor Todd Wilken at Issues, Etc .
One of the keys to understanding the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13) is to understand the time frame. Jesus is speaking in pictures and symbols about some period of history, but which? What’s the beginning, and what’s the end of the parable? Is Jesus talking about what…
Shakespeare wrote two tetrologies of English history, patriotically celebrating the Tudor monarchy by recounting its chaotic prehistory. Read in chronological order, Shakespeare’s English histories trace the depressing collapse of medieval politics, from the ineffectual but dignified medieval kingdom of Richard II, through the usurpation of Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV,…
The Heart of Liturgy What we call sacrament, the food-aspect of worship, is essential here. Biblically, sanctuary worship, or worship in the heavenlies, is always a “marriage supper,” always sacramental. The Papal Church made the Eucharist into a private act largely separated from the community of the church. Protestant churches…
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Reader Chris Jones rebuked me, rightly, for putting up Dana Milbank’s version of an Obama quote and accusing him of a Messiah complex. Here’s a fuller version of the quotation, which makes it clear that Obama was actually saying the enthusiasm was about America’s importance and not his own: “It…
Alvin Plantinga has great fun skewering HBC - “historical biblical criticism” - in an essay in Behind the Text . He notes that critics lament that Christians go on as if HBC never happened, and asks if the advocates of HBC have given Christians reason to do otherwise. He concludes…
Dana Milbank reports that Obama told a House delegation yesterday: “This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for,” adding: “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” Yes, indeed, a return to American tradition, particularly the American tradition…
Rivers (volume 1 of Reason, Grace, and Sentiment ) gives a sympathetic portrayal of the post-Restoration latitudinarians. She cites Gilbert Burnet’s history several times. According to Burnet, the latitude-men “and those who were formed under them, studied to examine farther into the nature of things than had been done formerly.…
In Berkeley, the freethinkers had an opponent at least as smart and witty. In an essay in the Guardian , Berkeley’s character, Ulysses Cosmopolita sees a vision: “I saw a great castle with a fortification cast round it, and a tower adjoining to it that through the windows appeared to…
Isabel Rivers (Volume 2 of Reason, Grace, and Sentiment ) has a superb summary of the freethinkers’ account of the corruption of religion. In its origins, religion was “plain, easy, true” and was rooted in and expressed “nature.” But this was diverted “by priests, who, motivated by greed and playing…
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