Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Where do we go from here? Depending on one’s perspective, the American story can plausibly be interpreted in different ways. Looked at from past to present , we can see a great deal of continuity from medieval Christendom and the Reformation to America’s founding. The War for Independence, after all,…
Click HERE for Part 1 Civic Religion: American or Christian? We have already traced out the basic contours of the shift in America from an ecclesiocentric, theocratic social order to a secular one. Building on Locke and Hobbes, the Enlightenment accomplished an astonishing coup of Christendom. That victory for the…
Author’s Introductory Note: Engaging in broad historical interpretation as I am about to do is always risky. Necessarily, one “stylizes” history by simplifying, over generalizing, and stereotyping. But the narrative qualities of history are not simply due to the imposition of human rationality upon brute facts; rather history is always…
A. Repentance to life involves endeavoring to believe real hard that you’re saved. reject infant baptism. stop watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. walk with God in all the ways of his commandments. B. What is necessary so that no sinner may expect to be forgiven unless he does it? Only…
The machine works mechanically and it is flawless. Slander/libel a group of Presbyterian ministers as “Romanist” because robes and James 2 are no worse than praying to Mary or relying on purgatory to pay for unconfessed sins. Drive off anyone who disagrees. Of that number, there may be a tiny…
If we take as a starting point the Tribal / Monarchical / Empire model, we can then add to it the Late Empire Phase. The particular ‘marker sin’ of Empire is false intermarriage, which signifies pluralism and syncretism. Empires by definition are “cosmopolitan” dominated by cities, high culture, many cultures,…
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In Dialectic of Enlightenment , Horkheimer and Adorno characterize the Enlightenment assault on metaphysics as an assault on the remnants of old superstition. Among the Greeks, “by means of the Platonic ideas, even the patriarchal gods of Olympus were absorbed in the philosophical logos . The Enlightenment, however, recognized the…
In their study of Hobbes and Boyle, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer show that Hobbes’s opposition to Boyle’s air pump was as political as scientific. Hobbes complained about the Catholic system because it introduced a double loyalty to church and state, and he was particularly vicious with the priests who…
Does beauty compel assent? It certainly seems to. Ought it? That’s trickier. If an explanation encompasses the data simply and elegantly and beautifully, does that make it a good explanation? Does that make it true? Are the “transcendentals” truly interchangeable? If the explanation does not compel by its beauty, what…
Can we say that Hosea had Jesus in mind when he wrote “out of Egypt I call My Son”? Does it matter whether he did or not? If not, does this mean we can do anything we like to texts, find in them whatever we care to bring? Historian David…
I read John 1:1, and I hear echoes of Genesis 1:1, and I begin to suspect that John wants to teach that the gospel story is a story of new creation. That conclusion does not rest simply on the phrase “in the beginning,” but that phrase is certainly a pointer…
David Steinmetz finds Benjamin Jowett’s claim that Scripture’s “one meaning” is “the meaning which it had to the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it” to be “insufficiently historical, He argues (in Ellen Davis and Richard Hays,…
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