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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Christianity Today reported this week on a controversy among European Evangelicals about relations with the Roman Catholic Church. Thomas Schirrmacher and Thomas K. Johnson of the World Evangelical Alliance, responded with a defense of Evangelical collaboration and dialogue with Catholics . Schirrmacher and Johnson note the difference between the Reformation…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's *In the Cross of Reality,* the first volume of his *Sociology*: "Rene Descartes' mother died shortly after childbirth. . . . He never found relief from the formal strictness prevalent among grown men, with its presumption of standing by one's given world. Prematurely, this child had no choice…
It’s important to pay careful attention to the title of Brian Brock’s superb 2010 Christian Ethics in a Technological Age . The book isn't merely a theological/ethical analysis of technology, though it includes that. Brock’s aim is broader, as he explores the shape of Christian morality in contemporary, technological society,…
The following paragraphs are snipped from an article of mine on God and time in Genesis 1, published in the Criswell Theological Review. You can find more information about this issue of the journal here . It seems significant that Genesis describes this evening-and-morning pattern without reference to the category…
Theopolis student Jacob Hanby pointed out that Ezekiel uses the phrase "the hand of Yahweh" seven times. It appears at major junctures in the prophecy: Ezekiel 1:3 : The first verses of Ezekiel provide a double narrative opening (first person, then third person) to a prophecy that is largely taken…
Mark Lilla's dissection of identity politics in The Once and Future Liberal is incisive. He doesn't spare the conservative movement or the Republican party in the least, but he at his sharpest in analyzing what he calls the "abdication" of liberalism and the Democratic party. Liberals, he argues, once had…
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