Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Timon Cline wrote recently that “theonomists” didn’t run Puritan New England. 1 He is correct, in his major thesis, that the claim that “Puritanism and the natural law tradition are antithetical” is “wildly ahistorical.” Mr. Cline demonstrates that Puritans repeatedly extolled natural law. Besides the Puritan sources Mr. Cline mustered,…
The Church is the land of the walking trees. In Mark’s Gospel, the identity of Jesus is slowly and progressively revealed. Though St. Mark announces at the beginning of his narrative that Jesus Christ is “the Son of God” (1:1), this is a reality that must be spoon-fed to His…
All Scripture is of ultimate significance as the word of God, but it may be helpful to think about what makes a book (in this case, a letter) possibly unique within the canon. In this case, the “general” nature of Ephesians should stand out, but it often is not recognized…
Where do we draw the lines between what is right and wrong? This question is fundamental to civilization, fundamental to a free society. To put this question in the bluntest and most offense terms: if there is a time to kill — which Solomon says there is — whom shall…
This article was originally posted in May of 1994. We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The early Church tended to speak of Him as Father, Word, and Spirit. In this short essay, I want to suggest some other ways to think of the Trinity, ways that…
Jonah’s Home The story of JONAH belongs in the book of KINGS. JONAH balances the story of the unnamed Judean prophet (1K13) in KINGS’ literary structure. Each story describes a journeying prophet that crosses land or sea to confront a wayward king. The two stories are located during the reigns…
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Ancient politics had to do with governing a people set in a particular location; so did the modern politics of the nation-state. With the large-scale population movements of the last half-century, the ethnic homogeneity of the nation-state (never entirely homogenous to begin with) has dissolved further. Nationality is no longer…
Political scientist David Jacobson notes the connection between immigration and shifts in understandings of rights: “Transnational migration is steadily eroding the traditional basis of nation-state membership, namely citizenship. As rights have come to be predicated on residency, not citizen state, the distiction between ‘citizen’ and ‘alian’ has eroded. The devaluation…
The reviewer of Ernest Sterberg’s 1999 Economy of Icons in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology summarizes some main points from this latter-day Thorstein Veblen: “The thesis of this controversial book is that ‘enterprises make their way in the capitalist economy by transforming commodities into icons.’ An icon is…
Discussions of the postmodern self often trace a genealogy from Descartes to Locke to Kant to Nietzsche to Heidegger to Foucault. But though philosophers no doubt have some influence on the daily experiences of normal humans, this sort of treatment doesn’t quite get to the ground level. In 1991, Paul…
Evidence that Fukuyama may have had it right: Walter Truett Anderson writes that “the International Commission on Peace and Food (in its 1994 report) pointed to the urgent need to create employment for hundreds of millions of poor people, and at the same time dismissed the notion that most of…
Psychologist Brewster Smith decries the solvents of postmodern life - cynicism, shallowness, sensationalism, warfare between fundamentalisms and relativisms, uncertainty about all standards, the “fin de siecle sense of drift and doom” (even after the fin). What’s his solution? Find yourself a community that can give you values, standards, a heritage,…
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