Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
First John 5.16-17: If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life–to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for…
A few years back I read Lesslie Newbigin’s little book Truth and Authority in Modernity . 1 I was particularly impressed with his argument in chapter 2 “The Mediation of Divine Authority.” Now, maybe this is old hat to many of you, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it…
Baptism is not Christian circumcision. There’s a lot of loose talk to that effect in Presbyterian circles; but it’s not accurate. The old world rite of circumcision was fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Baptism unites us to Christ and therefore makes us participate in the circumcision of…
In recent years I’ve observed a number of Reformed-type churches trying to institute corporate handraising in certain sung parts of worship. This often does not seem to work very well. Some people don’t do it. Some do it half-way. Some do it with one hand. Some dramatically stretch to the…
Most modern scholars recognize that behind Arius’s campaign to differentiate Jesus from God was the Hellenistic theological conviction that the high God cannot suffer. Rowan Williams argues that Arius had the right idea about divine suffering, but the wrong idea of God, which “puts the unavoidable question of what the…
Charismatics have been much maligned for constantly “praising the Lord.” They would say if you hit your finger with a hammer, you should instantly say, “Thank you Jesus that You let me hit my finger…” This of course, as we all know, is stupid. There was once a lady who…
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W e should, Paul Griffiths says ( Decreation , 324–5), be careful about the aesthetic judgments we make: “every human creature's formation in the discernment and delight in beauty is different, and because each of us is badly damaged with respect to our capacity to make reliable judgments about the…
As recorded in the supplement to the Summa , Thomas Aquinas teaches that the damned will rise again with bodies and will be tormented in hell corporeally. This leaves open questions about the materiality of the various biblical descriptions of those torments, and in question 97 of the supplement, Thomas…
In his Organizing Enlightenment , Chad Wellmon explains how the modern research university was a response to a crisis of “information overload.” The Enlightenment saw an explosion of new knowledge and research. The Enlightenment empire of erudition was a bookish empire. Philosophes imagined they could provide a unified account of…
If the infinite God is to be present within a finite creation, writes David Bentley Hart ( Beauty of the Infinite , 204), “the finite must . . . become ever more open, ever greater and more capacious . . . ; and creaturely mutability allows for this.” Hart is…
T he name of R.J. Rushdoony, the polymathic Reformed theologian, historian, and activist, has appeared with increasing frequency in accounts of the religious right. There is a small industry in screeds warning of the dire threat of theocracy, and Rushdoony plays the role of the father of all theocrats. It's…
The prophecy of Habakkuk closes with a lovely poem of joy in the midst of adversity and lack (Habakkuk 3:17-19). The poem opens with six lines that describe the barrenness of the land. It is a nihil-land; the Hebrew negative lo' occurs twice (“fig tree does not blossom”; “the field…
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