Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…
The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…
Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…
The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…
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A ll theology is about God. All theology is theology proper. For Christian theology, the only God who is is the God who created this world. All theology is theology of creation. There is no God but the God of history, who chose Israel. All theology is covenant theology. There…
T he Lord's response to Solomon's prayer, and to Israel's song and sacrifice, is laid out in an interlocking series of chiasms (2 Chronicles 7:12–22). After an introductory notice that Yahweh appeared to Solomon by night (v. 12), the first, affirmative response is a pledge of God's presence and attention:…
I n The Watershed of Modern Politics , the last of a trilogy on the emergence of modern political thought from the Latin Middle Ages, Francis Oakley observes that “arguments based on secular political analogies, or arguments simply taking for granted something of a constitutional overlap between political and ecclesiastical…
T he Chronicler can't talk about praise without breaking out in praise. He can't describe Israel's worship without worshiping. This tic makes for some convolution. After the ark ascends to Zion and enters the tent of David, the Levitical singers praise Yahweh. The Chronicler writes, “And with [the priests] were…
P salm 72 is one of the most majestic, calmly triumphant Psalms in the Psalter. Attributed to Solomon, or written for Solomon, it is redolent of the glories of his reign. This king has received judgments from the God of Israel, and that enables him to pass judgment. Gifts from…
“P opulism seems more and more to be an inevitable drift of unqualified liberal democracy,” writes John Milbank (244). Well, duh, we might say, except that this appears in a book published in 2009 ( The Future of Love ), before Le Pen or Brexit or Trump were the stuff…
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