Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Some of the key ways Biblical writers draw attention to important details in their stories are by the use of key words, repetition, and structural devices like chiasms and parallel constructions. The Bible sounds different, even odd, to us sometimes because of the use of these and similar literary conventions.…
It is pretty standard in conservative Christian circles to condemn unbelief for pretensions of “autonomy.” Cornelius Van Til famously (at least among those of us who knows who he is) said that “There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.” Greg Bahnsen appealed to this quotation by labeling…
Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever taught — the Light of the World, whose pure Truth brought sight to the blind (John 9). Almost no one — even those who speak openly against Him — disputes His reputation as a wise and good teacher of the way of love.…
It is clear that the events in Esther are an integral part of the history of the formation of the Restoration Covenant Era. Amalek attacks. Amalek is spoiled. The spoils are used to build the Temple, in the sense that the crude Temple of Zerubbabel can now be glorified with…
It is not coincidental that John Calvin speaks most strongly in defense of vernacular language just after his defense of singing in church. "From this also it plainly appears that public prayers must be couched not in Greek among the Latins, nor in Latin among the French or English, as…
In A Voyage Around the World , George Anson recounts the effects of scurvy upon an unfortunate man: But a most extraordinary circumstance, and what would be scarcely credible upon any single evidence, is, that the scars of wounds which had been for many years healed, were forced open again…
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Love has power to transform the world and lovers. "Love is the answer to the despair in which a reality is lost that knows nothing other than law, fate, and will" (74). Rosenstock-Huessy makes this claim in his Sociology , but he's not being gauzily sentimental. Love takes public form…
What did the fathers who formulated the Nicene Creed mean to assert when they described the relationship between Father and Son with the term homoouios , "same substance"? In what sense "substance" and in what sense "same"? Surveying the usage of this terminology before Nicea, Christopher Stead ( Divine Substance…
Through the administration of the mystery, the manifold wisdom of God is made know through the church to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3:9-10). The “mystery” is something hidden in God for ages past and now revealed in Christ. In Ephesians, the mystery is the union of…
Public discourse, it is often argued, has to be conducted in common language, and religious language isn't common. Religion has to be left in the "vestibule." Where does that perception come from? asks Charles Taylor . Taylor traces it to an epistemological distinction: "There is secular reason, which everyone can…
Stephen Holmes ( Quest for the Trinity ) summarizes Gregory of Nyssa's response to Eunomius's use of divine names: "Gregory is scathing about Eunomius's assumption that the divine essence can be adequately named. His arguments on this point are often unsatisfactory, turning regularly on the assumption that the same divine…
Lenn Goodman's essay in Theology and the Soul of the Liberal State presents a devastating critique of Rawlsian political liberalism. The fundamental issue, Goodman claims, is that Rawls treats individual decisions as public acts, and therefore believes that liberalism needs to curtail the influence of ideologies even in the voting…
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