Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Understanding Shakespeare’s Biblical references is vital for the interpretation of many, if not all, of Shakespeare’s plays. For Othello , it is especially important, not only because the interpretation of the play is contested among various approaches — feminist, homosexual, post-colonial, Marxist, Freudian, new historical, and others — but also…
Mike Allen of Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, scores some points in his review of The End of Protestantism . He lodges the fair complaint that my rhetoric sometimes outruns my evidence. He argues that more stress on the present reality of the church’s unity deepens the tragedy of division; divisions…
I begin with two observations. First, on any millennial view, the Christian account of history is progressive, moving from the garden to the city. It is eschatological not only in that there is an end, but that the end is a glorified beginning, not merely a return to origins. To…
The church is a new form of polity that erupts into the world as much as the Son of God comes into the world. It’s a real-world political alternative to the polities of the ancient world. It resolves many of the political dilemmas of the ancient world, though not simply…
In my last post , I explained how Baptists really have a “one-ordinance-one sacrament” ecclesiology. I said this: “what Baptists really believe, in modern parlance, is that there is one ordinance (baptism which is a sign or symbol only) and one sacrament (the Lord’s Supper in which feeding upon Jesus…
One of the most extensive and penetrating responses to the Yoder-Hauerwas attack on Constantiniansm is found in Oliver O’Donovan’s Desire of Nations , in a chapter entitled “The Obedience of Rulers.” O’Donovan defines the word “Christendom” as “a historical idea,” specifically “the idea of a professedly Christian secular political order,…
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As is well known from Confessions , Faustus played a crucial role in Augustine’s formation. As a young Manichean Auditor and devotee of astrology, Augustine puzzled over philosophical and quasi-scientific conundrums that he wanted to pose to a Manichean master. When Bishop Faustus visited Carthage, Augustine found him affable, humble,…
Though Augustine had the arsenal of the contra Iudaeos tradition at hand in responding to Faustus, he had become dissatisfied with it. After his debate with Fortunatus the Manichean, Augustine had embarked on a deep study of Paul and Genesis and came to recognize the weaknesses of this tradition, whose…
When Augustine turns to the typology of unclean foods in his reply to Faustus, he introduces a linguistic analogy that lays a foundation for the later arguments. Paul’s claim that all things are clean (1 Timothy 4:4) does not contradict the Old Testament, since Paul is talking about the nature…
Revelation 12-14 roughly follows the sequence of the first half of the week of creation. The overall movement is from heaven to sea to earth. Genesis 1 begins with light, then the separation of waters above and below, the formation of sea and land. We can be more specific. Land…
In The Dome of Eden , Stephen Webb wonders what might have happened if J. Gresham Machen, Princeton theologian and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, had been at the Scopes trial. In Webb's account, Machen's main concern was to challenge the naturalistic presumptions of Darwinism: “Machen never rejected the basic…
In Purity Rabbinic Judaism (46), Jacob Neusner comments on the role of liquidity in the purity system: “Dry inanimate objects or food are not susceptible to uncleanness. What is wet is susceptible. So liquids activate the system.” A dead animal on a pile of grain contaminates only the grain that…
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