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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Between Revelation 6:16-17, which speak of the “wrath of the Lamb” and “the great day of their wrath,” and 11:18, which says that the wrath came against the enraged nations, there is no reference to the wrath ( orge ) of God. As the seals come to a conclusion, the…
“Dominion” has a bad rap these days. The creation mandate to “have dominion, fill, subdue, and rule” the earth is regarded with suspicion: It gives human beings religious justification for environmental rapacity, domination of the other, sexism and racism. The Bible recognizes this possibility. The first king in Scripture is…
Over the centuries, readers have assumed that Revelation was written in, or predicting, a period of intense persecution. Irenaeus seems to say that Revelation was written in the reign of Domitian, and commentators have gone to lengths to show that Domitian fits the profile of the beast. Scholars today widely…
Scientists are human. They need to communicate with each other. For centuries, science has been an international, now a global, enterprise. How do scientists communicate? Once, French was, well, the lingua franca , so dominant in the discourses of high culture and science of the late 18th century that even…
The action of Revelation 12-15 moves from the sky to earth to the sea and then back up. In 11:19, the temple of God in heaven is opened, revealing the heavenly ark. Then there is a sign in heaven, in the firmament where the sun, moon, and stars are, the…
Apocalypse is also supposed to describe a particular form of eschatology, particularly beliefs about the end of the world. This is the sense in which the word is used in Ernst Kasemann’s famous claim that apocalyptic is the mother of Christian theology. Kasemann meant that early Christians believed in the…
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