Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Understanding Shakespeare’s Biblical references is vital for the interpretation of many, if not all, of Shakespeare’s plays. For Othello , it is especially important, not only because the interpretation of the play is contested among various approaches — feminist, homosexual, post-colonial, Marxist, Freudian, new historical, and others — but also…
Mike Allen of Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, scores some points in his review of The End of Protestantism . He lodges the fair complaint that my rhetoric sometimes outruns my evidence. He argues that more stress on the present reality of the church’s unity deepens the tragedy of division; divisions…
I begin with two observations. First, on any millennial view, the Christian account of history is progressive, moving from the garden to the city. It is eschatological not only in that there is an end, but that the end is a glorified beginning, not merely a return to origins. To…
The church is a new form of polity that erupts into the world as much as the Son of God comes into the world. It’s a real-world political alternative to the polities of the ancient world. It resolves many of the political dilemmas of the ancient world, though not simply…
In my last post , I explained how Baptists really have a “one-ordinance-one sacrament” ecclesiology. I said this: “what Baptists really believe, in modern parlance, is that there is one ordinance (baptism which is a sign or symbol only) and one sacrament (the Lord’s Supper in which feeding upon Jesus…
One of the most extensive and penetrating responses to the Yoder-Hauerwas attack on Constantiniansm is found in Oliver O’Donovan’s Desire of Nations , in a chapter entitled “The Obedience of Rulers.” O’Donovan defines the word “Christendom” as “a historical idea,” specifically “the idea of a professedly Christian secular political order,…
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John Judis has an interesting discussion of the roots and significance of Obama’s candidacy in the March 12 issue of TNR . In part, he sees it rooted in the American obsession with novelty. By presenting himself as the “candidate of the new,” Obama strikes a deep chord in the…
In the journal Economica , Leo Kahane, David Paton and Rob Simmons offer an analysis of the supposed link between abortion rates and the reduction of crime rates in the UK (the article is entitled, “The Abortion–Crime Link: Evidence from England and Wales”). The authors challenge the findings of several…
INTRODUCTION On the day we call Palm Sunday, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem after a long journey. As He enters the city, the people proclaim Him as King. He is the King, the King come to inspect His house and declare judgment against it. THE TEXT “Now when they drew near…
Milbank suggests that Thomas’s view on causation was more Dionysian than Aristotelian. That is, it was not external and prior to its effects, but rather is an “attribution to the original source of the ‘gift’ of the effect in its whole entirety as effect.” On this view, “a cause does…
The common description of theology as “faith seeking understanding” is often understood in a dualist fashion: Faith is the starting point, then reasoning takes over on the basis of faith, and through that process of reasoning, faith reaches understanding. Milbank suggests on the contrary that for Augustine and Anselm and…
According to Scheeben, created spirit is inhibited not only by matter but by other matter-like obstacles, particularly by potentiality and the composite (form/matter, act/potency) character of created things. Created spirit is “material” in comparison with the free and unihibited simplicity of divine spirit. Elsewhere he says that “immaterial substances” are…
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