Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Vanity of vanities", says the Preacher. "All is vanity". Life, we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes, is a repetitious, wearisome cycle; all that is and all that will be has already been. There is nothing new under the sun. What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is…
The Bible tells us that when God created the earth, He set up three zones of life. The first was the world itself. The second was the holy land of Eden. And the third was the Garden in Eden, God’s sanctuary. God told Adam and Eve that every tree was…
In our survey of Biblical chronology we have arrived at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which provide chronological information for the period after the return from exile, the Restoration Period of Old Testament history. The question we begin to address in this essay is whether the Artaxerxes of these…
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount are generally taken in connection with Jesus’ earlier statement concerning adultery in the heart (vv. 27-28); the eye and the hand have obvious relevance to the sin of adultery. At the same time, most commentators admit that the principle of avoiding occasions…
17. The eye that mocks a father, And despises to obey a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it. 18. There are three things that are too wonderful for me, Four that I do not understand: 19. The way of…
The modern Church in America and virtually everywhere else is ideology-centered, not geographical. This is because various Churches believe different things and have different customs of worship and sacraments. The ideological Church has gradually developed from the time of the Reformation, because accuracy of doctrine has become more important to…
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It’s not clear whether Vico (1668-1744) had actually read Descartes (1596-1650) directly, or how much he had read. But it is clear enough that he had read and understood the Cartesianism of his time. His response is perhaps most clearly seen in his treatment of ethics. He opposed the application…
Caputo argues that for Kant God fulfills a purely “regulative” function, providing the basis for an aesthetic “as if” regarding the divine regulation of the world. God also has a moral function, giving the rational demands of duty a divine, theological umph. Kant’s philosophy and the Enlightenment in general “put…
Vico objected to the prioritization of natural science and logic over rhetoric in the schools of his day, arguing that “the invention of arguments are by nature prior to the judgment of their validity, so that, in teaching, that invention should be given priority over philosophical criticisms.”
Hamann: “The connection and agreement of concepts is precisely the same in a demonstration as the relation and sympathy of numbers and lines, sounds and colours are in a musical composition or painting.”
As noted in a post earlier his week, Barth sees Kant’s philosophical program as an opening for the biblical theologian to do his own thing on his own basis by his own methods, without paying much of any attention to reason. Milbank wonders if this doesn’t leave a “certain liberal…
Milbank closes a superb article on the “radical pietists” (Hamann and Jacobi) with this paragraph: “Because [the radical pietists] point theology to a radical orthodoxy they also show how theology can outwit nihilism. Not by seeking to reinstate reason, as many opponents of postmodernity would argue. This is absurd, because…
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