Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Understanding Shakespeare’s Biblical references is vital for the interpretation of many, if not all, of Shakespeare’s plays. For Othello , it is especially important, not only because the interpretation of the play is contested among various approaches — feminist, homosexual, post-colonial, Marxist, Freudian, new historical, and others — but also…
Mike Allen of Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, scores some points in his review of The End of Protestantism . He lodges the fair complaint that my rhetoric sometimes outruns my evidence. He argues that more stress on the present reality of the church’s unity deepens the tragedy of division; divisions…
I begin with two observations. First, on any millennial view, the Christian account of history is progressive, moving from the garden to the city. It is eschatological not only in that there is an end, but that the end is a glorified beginning, not merely a return to origins. To…
The church is a new form of polity that erupts into the world as much as the Son of God comes into the world. It’s a real-world political alternative to the polities of the ancient world. It resolves many of the political dilemmas of the ancient world, though not simply…
In my last post , I explained how Baptists really have a “one-ordinance-one sacrament” ecclesiology. I said this: “what Baptists really believe, in modern parlance, is that there is one ordinance (baptism which is a sign or symbol only) and one sacrament (the Lord’s Supper in which feeding upon Jesus…
One of the most extensive and penetrating responses to the Yoder-Hauerwas attack on Constantiniansm is found in Oliver O’Donovan’s Desire of Nations , in a chapter entitled “The Obedience of Rulers.” O’Donovan defines the word “Christendom” as “a historical idea,” specifically “the idea of a professedly Christian secular political order,…
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While his wife Rachel is dying, Manie Swart promises to give one of the family houses to Salome, the family’s lifelong black maid. Young Amor Swart overhears The Promise and asks about it after her mother’s death. Manie pretends he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Years later, Manie dies…
Gotta love ol’ Tommaso d’Aquino, a.k.a. Thomas Aquinas. The margins of my various copies of his works are full of notes of disagreement and question marks, but still: His toss-off arguments are usually deeper than the sustained arguments of lesser theologians. Here’s a pot pourri from the early part of…
This essay was first published at FirstThings.com in September 2019. Given recent debate about justice, friends, and enemies, it seemed useful to repost it here. A third of the way through the Book of Acts, a man named Saul takes over the narrative. Like Israel’s King Saul, this Saul is…
This essay was first published in The Theopolitan, a weekly newsletter for Theopolis Partners. To become a Partner, you must donate at least $500 per year or $50 per month. Give here . Craig Carter’s Thesis #2 about Trinitarian classical theism ( Contemplating God with the Great Tradition ) is,…
“All things are yours,” Paul says (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). Therefore, writes Thomas Traherne ( Centuries of Meditation ), we should enjoy them as our own possessions: God . . . hath made it infinitely easy to enjoy, by making everything ours, and us able so easily to prize them. Everything…
This essay was first published in The Theopolitan, a weekly newsletter for Theopolis Partners. To become a Partner, you must donate at least $500 per year or $50 per month. Give here . It’s a truism that each negative commandment in Scripture implies a positive command. “Do not kill” entails…
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