Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Reformed theology has changed. And there seems to be no going back. It was in the year 1978 that a tectonic shift in the underlying structure of Reformed theology began with the publication of a small book. The changes were not only systematic, but also systemic—affecting all aspects of it.…
Since the term, “alt-right,” is being tossed about in the national media and is the subject of moral concern (or perhaps, moral panic), it might be good to identify what we’re talking about or at least admit the limitations of using nicknames to describe cultural shifts and voter behavior. Until…
Confession Confession belongs at the beginning of the liturgy. We enter into God’s house, invited for a meal, and we need to clean up before we do that. Cleansing was a requirement for the priests of the OT before they entered the sanctuary to minister (Exodus 30:17-21). When Yahweh appeared…
“And God made the two great lights; the greater light for the dominion of the day, and the lesser light for the dominion of the night; the stars also.” (Genesis 1:16, NASV) In Judges 5, verse 31, the prophetess Deborah prays, "let those who love Him be like the rising…
In part 1 of this article we saw how various attempts to identify the underlying structure of Gen. 22:1-19 fell short and proposed a new structure for the passage. In part 2, we will look at how the sections of the chiasm relate and draw some conclusions from our investigation.…
Chiastic structures abound in the book of Genesis. For example, the Flood narrative is one long chiasm, as is the life of Abraham. It is the contention of this brief study that Gen. 22:1-19, also known as the Aqedah, is another such passage. And this structure reveals a talented author…
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In the first part of his article “Soul of Reciprocity,” Milbank contrasts Cartesian generosity with Christian: “if the cogito is the donum , it is an impoverished donum . Generosity, in Descartes, begins as generosity towards oneself, or rather, as an expansive willing, that already is, auto-effectively, generosity. It is…
Maarten Wisse scores some points against Trinitarian “participationist” ontology in his 2011 Trinitarian Theology beyond Participation: Augustine’s De Trinitate and Contemporary Theology (T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology) . But there are irritations. Early on, he points out that participationist theologies attempt to redress the modern disenchantment of the world.…
Vickers ( Invocation and Assent: The Making and the Remaking of Trinitarian Theology ) gives a thorough and challenging account of the collapse of Trinitarian theology in seventeenth-century English Protestantism. He thinks that the collapse can be traced to three roots: The appeal to Scripture as the rule of faith;…
Building on the work of Robert Jenson and especially JND Kelly, Jason Vickers argues in Invocation and Assent: The Making and the Remaking of Trinitarian Theology that the proto-creedal affirmations of Trinitarian theology that are found in the various “rules of faith” specifically aim to undergird confidence in the efficacy…
“Despite the contemporary belief that ‘the normal sacrificial cult is a cult without revelation or epiphany,’” writes Kimberley Patton in her Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity , “primary evidence suggests that the Greeks believed that the gods both attended and responded to sacrifice. In Book 12 of…
The cultural history of night is the subject of two recent books. Roger Ekirch’s At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past is a broad history of the uses and symbolism of night prior to the invention of electric lighting. One of his most fascinating discoveries was the habit of segmented…
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