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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Rebutting Jonathan Last’s portrait of Batman as the comic book answer to liberalism, Travis Smith (writing at the Weekly Standard site) argues that Spiderman is the better antidote to modernity: “The essential difference between Spider-Man and Batman can be detected in their styles: Spidey’s banter is full of quips and…
In his contribution to Gifts and Interests (Morality and the Meaning of Life) , Jacques Godbout suggests that the freedoms of modernity are “founded on the immediate and permanent liquidation of debt.” In the market, all debts are immediately canceled: You give me goods over the counter, I give you…
So, the prose is a overwrought, but Robert Raynolds vividly captures the giftiness of gratitude in a couple of passages in his 1961 prose-poem, In Praise of Gratitude . Returning from a visit to Mexico as a young man, he pays a visit to the woman who will become his…
In his L’ingratitude: Conversation sur notre temps (French Edition) , Alain Finkielkraut cites Roland Barthes’s inaugural lecture at the College of France: “Language, as performance of the language system, is neither reactionary nor progressive. It is simply fascist: for fascism is not the prohibition of saying things but the obligation…
Protestants are often charged with unleashing the social solvents of individualism on the world. The Reformers didn’t see things that way. In fact, they claimed to be standing for community against the corrosive individualism of the medieval Mass. Hence Calvin writes ( Institutes 4.18.7). He begins with “The Supper itself…
In a 2007 article in the Scottish Journal of Theology , Piotr Malysz challenges William Cavanaugh’s reading of Luther’s eucharistic theology. According to Cavanaugh, Luther’s theology created a dualism between “exchange” and “gift,” and turned the latter into a supernatural “intrusion” into the transactionist patterns of normal social life. Malysz…
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