Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Our creeds, taking cues from Matthew 28:18-20 and other biblical texts, speak of the order of the Trinity as “Father, Son, Spirit.” This order is evident in the order of redemption as well: the Father sends the Son, who ascends to heaven to receive and send the Spirit. Luke 1,…
The category of “relation” has long been central to Trinitarian theology, [1] but in recent theology it has become a transcendental, as many theologians have argued that relationality is the leading feature not only of divine life but of created life. [2] Human beings made in the image of the…
Listen to Trinity House President Peter Leithart discuss his article on the End of Protestantism with LCMS pastor Todd Wilken at Issues, Etc .
One of the keys to understanding the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13) is to understand the time frame. Jesus is speaking in pictures and symbols about some period of history, but which? What’s the beginning, and what’s the end of the parable? Is Jesus talking about what…
Shakespeare wrote two tetrologies of English history, patriotically celebrating the Tudor monarchy by recounting its chaotic prehistory. Read in chronological order, Shakespeare’s English histories trace the depressing collapse of medieval politics, from the ineffectual but dignified medieval kingdom of Richard II, through the usurpation of Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV,…
The Heart of Liturgy What we call sacrament, the food-aspect of worship, is essential here. Biblically, sanctuary worship, or worship in the heavenlies, is always a “marriage supper,” always sacramental. The Papal Church made the Eucharist into a private act largely separated from the community of the church. Protestant churches…
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Eucharist has always been the center of the worship of the people of God. Abel worshiped Yahweh at an altar, which is to say, a table, and so did Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all Israel . That continued into the new covenant, where the Lord’s Supper instituted by Jesus…
Jesus says the Father seeks worshipers who worship in Spirit and in truth. We know that “spiritual worship” doesn’t mean immaterial, non-bodily worship. It couldn’t: Even if we sit as quietly as Quakers, we need our bodies to fill the chair. But what does it mean to worship in Spirit?…
Charles Krauthammer has a sharp analysis of the AIG bonus fiasco: “in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. If…
Schmemann again (from an appendix to For the Life of the World ): “To condemn a heresy is relatively easy. What is much more difficult is to detect the question it implies, and to give this question an adequate answer. Such, however, was always the Church’s dealing with ‘heresies’ -…
Schmemann anticipates Milbank: “Secularism - we must again and again stresss this - is a ‘stepchild’ of Christianity, as are, in the last analysis, all secular ideologies which today dominate the world - not, as it is claimed by the Western apostles of a Christian acceptance of secularism, a legitimate…
David VanDrunen of Westminster West offered an interesting Christological defense of iconoclasm in an article several years ago published in the International Journal of Systematic Theology . Christology, he argues, does not support the conclusion that we may make pictures of Jesus, but the opposite. Because Jesus is still the…
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