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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Writing in the 1955, Walter Lippmann already discerned that the US was approaching the limits of toleration and facing a crisis of civil discourse. In his Essays on the Public Philosophy , he writes: "As we know from the variety and sharpness of schisms and sects in our time, we…
If we wanted to remodel a church, we'd hire a general contractor as project manager, and he'd hire the various carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and other craftsmen to do the work. Not Josiah. When he sets out to repair the temple, he calls on the musicians . Commenting on 2 Chronicles…
In his contribution to Spoken and Unspoken Thanks , Kevin Reinhart observes that "in English both 'thanks' and 'gratitude' belong to the domain of individual inner life and using them in a religious context mirrors our Western understanding of religion as interior and affective, as dispositional rather than operational" (116).…
"The division . . . between 'corporate' and 'private' worship must be discarded," writes Alexander Schmemann in his Introduction to Liturgical Theology (24). He explains: "The purpose of worship is to constitute the Church, precisely to bring what is 'private' into the new life, to transform it into what belongs…
Adam Gopnik reviews Frederick Crews's Freud in The New Yorker , and along the way to the review gives a brisk overview of the spread of Freudianism from Vienna to Hampstead to Berkeley, where Crews spent his career teaching. Crews was among the earliest Freudian literary scholars, but has devoted…
For many Christians today, the purity rules of ancient Israel seem bizarre and opaque. We'd never think of trying to observe them. This "disenchantment" of purity is a sign of the power and success of the Reformation, because medieval Christians were still very much at home in the world of…
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