Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Utopia is often accompanied by such adjectives as impossible, unrealistic, and impractical. In spite of that, it is not so hard to find some renowned people who actually maintain that is a very helpful and practical concept. Zygmunt Bauman ( Socialism: The Active Utopia ) argues that “utopian thinking belongs…
C. S. Lewis was no fan of the cinema. He once described himself as “rather allergic to films” and after attending one he added in a letter to a friend, “Do not worry it shall not become a habit.” But though he was quick to dismiss films, his fruitful discussion…
Noted Catholic patristic scholar, Robert Louis Wilken, delivered the second annual Nevin Lectures at Beeson Divinity School's Hodges Chapel last Friday and Saturday, February 20-21, 2015. Wilken, the Emeritus William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia, traced the influence of the writings…
I confess that I’m surprised by the number of Christians who are surprised by the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey . Many are simply bewildered by the buzz the movie has generated. They shouldn’t be. This is the world we live in. More precisely, this is the country we…
The newer perspective on justification by faith advocated in various studies in Pauline Theology by N.T. Wright and others, is now utterly relevant to our historical situation. Such work cannot be merely avant garde theologizing. In Luther’s day, everyone was “in” as regards the Church and the faith. We were…
Over the centuries, Christians have fasted for many reasons. Sometimes, the reasons have been good. The apostles and their churches fasted and prayed before selecting elders or ordaining missionaries. Christians have fasted in mourning for their sins. They have fasted and prayed to combat demons and to plead with God…
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Knight criticizes Frederick Beiser’s treatment of rationality in the early English Enlightenment because he “does not relate ‘reason’ to reasoning together, converse, public talk, and the skills of the development of public talk. Reason therefore for him never appears as faith doing what it must do to remain faithful -…
Knight writes at the end of a couple of chapters exploring Israel’s calling and the role of her cult in that calling: “I have presented my atonement theory as a general anthopological theory. I have developed a Christology that serves as a general anthropology. I am not setting out first…
In making a structural point about Matthew’s references to “worship” of Jesus last week, I skimmed a bit too lightly over the details. Reader Ronald Man caught me, and offered these comments: There is no indication that the Magi (or Herod) recognized Jesus’ deity; rather it is clearly stated that…
One of the intriguing threads in Knight is his rehabilitation of biology within theology - or, more specifically, the inclusion of “blood and seed, of sonship and messiah, of holiness and purity” within pneumatology. Contesting the common opposition of fictive and biological kinship, he says that “we should understand ‘fictive’…
Knight again: “autonomous exegesis that does not stay in conversation with doctrine and philosophy cannot read Israel’s Scriptures as a political-cosmological world-claim. Without learning from doctrine and political philosophy, would-be exegetes of the Bible are unlikely to understand Israel’s cosmology as a public claim to commandeer, transform, and reemploy the…
Knight has a lot of intriguing things to say about Israel and the nations, among them: “As Israel suffers the gentile onslaughts, Israel is half-persuaded that it has to compete with the Gentiles as an equal rather than as their lord; Israel has to fight them as thought it were…
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