Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
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Vico was not opposed to logic, but thought that its centrality in modern educational systems was damaging: “it throws into utter confusion, in our adolescents, those powers of the youthful mind each of which should be regulated by a systematic study of specific subject matters; as, for instance, memory by…
Donald Verene writes that Vico’s opposition to Descartes and Cartesian thought rests on a “different conception of man.” For Vico, humans are “an integrality (not sheer rationality, not mere intellect, but also fantasy, passion, emotion),” and Verene also remarks on Vico’s “insistence on the historical and social dimension” of human…
In his Schmalkald Articles (1538), Luther begins with a brief statement about justification through Christ by faith. Later in the articles he returns to the issue of the gospel, and intriguingly introduces the sacraments as one of the “helps” that God provides against sin: “We now want to return to…
Hamann address his first dedication to his Socratic Memorabilia “To the Public, or, Nobody, the Well-Known.” The dedication begins with a concatenation of biblical polemics against idols: “You bear a name and need no proof of your existence, you find faith and do no miracles to earn it, you get…
Hamann’s style was as critical to his protest against Kant and the Encyclopedists as the content of his opaque essays. As Kenneth Haynes points out in the introduction to the recent Cambridge volume of Hamann’s writings, “The style he cultivated was the opposite of that of the Encyclopedie , obscure…
Hamann’s style was as critical to his protest against Kant and the Encyclopedists as the content of his opaque essays. As Kenneth Haynes points out in the introduction to the recent Cambridge volume of Hamann’s writings, “The style he cultivated was the opposite of that of the Encyclopedie , obscure…
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