Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
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Judaism and Christianity are often contrasted as an opposition between “ritualistic” and “nonritualistic” systems. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz ( The Savage in Judaism , 140) argues that this is a mistake. The real difference is a difference of “root metaphor.” This is partly a difference between the pastoral/agricultural setting of Israel’s imaginative…
Tercio Bretanha Junker’s Prophetic Liturgy has much to commend it. Junker aims to show how the church is trained for “prophetic praxis” through the liturgy. Liturgy “should facilitate the community’s awareness of its biblical foundations, the Christian historical trajectory, a consciousness of its cultural unity, and attentiveness to the transformative…
Stepan Trofimovich, the vain Francophone liberal in Dostoevsky’s Demons , claims to know the gospels well from reading Renan, but in fact hasn’t read the Bible itself in a long time. During an illness, he comes to see himself as the liar he is and asks Sophia to read the…
Jesus comes like a thief to the unsuspecting, the sleepy (Revelation 3:3). That doesn’t simply mean that His coming is a surprise. It means that He comes to take. That’s what thieves do. To prevent this, the angel of the church at Sardis has to “keep” ( tereo ) or…
George Pattison’s closing essay in Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition explores the similarities between Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. It’s been common to read both as “prophets revealing to `modern man’ the abyssal freedom, the wild frontiers and the midnight cries that threaten both the rational system-building of philosophers and social engineers…
In her contribution to Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition , Diane Thompson offers a brilliant analysis of Marmeladov’s speech to Raskolnikov at the beginning of Crime and Punishment . Everything he says is seasoned with grandiloquent references to the gospels, and especially to the Passion and last judgment narratives. He…
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