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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A former student, Matt Dau, commented on reading David Bentley Hart’s description of postmodernism and the sublime that it seemed very similar to the courtly love tradition - the dominating attraction of one’s life is the inaccessible beauty of the beloved. Judging from Holsinger’s work, that analogy is no accident.…
Holsinger argues ( Premodern Condition ) that Bataille, despite writing a somme atheologique was not so much attacking or parodying Thomism as critiquing Thomas with resources taken from inside the medieval Catholic tradition. As an illustration of his “intellectual open-mindedness vis-a-vis the tradition of Catholic theology,” Holsinger cites the exchange…
Bruce Holsinger gives this summary of the conflict between “traditional” Thomists and the advocates of nouvelle theologie during the early decades of the 20th century: “What infuriated . . . the [traditionalist] neo-Thomists about the nouvelle theologie was what they perceived as its historical relativism, which in turn derived from…
In what sense did Jesus fulfill the covenant of works? He is clearly the last Adam (Rom 6), and reverses the work of the first Adam. But unless we assume that Torah is a straightforward republication of the covenant of works, then any claims about Jesus fulfilling the covenant of…
Foucault is normally classified as a radical postmodern, but there is a strong “conservative” thrust to his work on the prison and other “disciplinary” mechanisms of the early modern period. His attention is mainly on the social, architectural, and political mechanisms that break down traditional solidarities and thereby isolate individuals…
One of the key themes of Foucault’s work is an effort to uncover the social conditions of modern individualism. He suggests that the idea that “the model of a society that has individuals as its constituent elements is borrowed from the abstract juridical forms of contract and exchange” is only…
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