Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“13th of July, 4:50 pm. I'm sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am. I tried, I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn't. And I know you…
CS Lewis's 1948 essay on “Priestesses in the Church” strikes a reader today as simultaneously quaintly naive and trenchantly prescient. The naive part comes near the beginning, where Lewis describes the decision to take “a revolutionary step.” It would “cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the…
Imagine a version of the Lord of the Rings beginning with Sauron riding into the Shire and lopping off heads in a mad search for the ring, driving Frodo to flight from the beginning, helter-skelter and harried. While, no doubt, some Hollywood exec is at this moment scrambling to reboot…
A Communist Confession of Faith states that the aim of the Communists is “to organize society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.” This aim can…
The story of the Fall enjoys a peculiar place in Christian thought. Together with the creation account in the two chapters that precede it, it is one of the few Old Testament narratives consistently to escape the relative neglect the Hebrew Scriptures often suffer. While the characters of Abraham, Moses,…
In the previous essay, we saw that fire is a work of the Holy Spirit. The two are related so closely that they cannot be separated. Now we turn our attention to the Spirit's relationship to water. Many have understood Spirit baptism to be a dry baptism, one that is…
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INTRODUCTION Our discussion of Mauss brought us to the verge of talking about postmodernism and the gift. We will do this primarily by examining Derrida, but to understand Derrida we need to spend some time with Levinas, one of the chief influences on Derrida’s thought. After examining some of the…
The following points are responses to the Report of the Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I hope I will be excused for responding mainly to those portions of the recent OPC report on the Federal Vision and the New Perspective that pertain to…
This summary of Wright’s views on justification is taken from passages in his new Paul in Fresh Perspective . 1) Covenant and apocalyptic. Unlike some contemporary scholars, Wright insists that covenant and apocalyptic are not opposed to one another, but joined in Paul’s teaching. By “covenant,” he means God’s settled…
John Bossy notes in an article on the social functions of the medieval mass that the mass dividedthe human race into living and dead, friends and enemies. Various sorts of prayers for enemies were included: “Even the post-Reformation Roman ritual followed its set of collects ‘for our friends’ with another…
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M sent along the following discussion of polygamy in the OT in response to some reflections I posted last week on the typology of Rachel and Leah. I’m reproducing it here with Jim’s permission. Why is polygamy tolerated in the OT (Ex 21.10, Dt 21.15-17) but…
INTRODUCTION During the reign of wicked Ahaz, Judah moves closer to Israelite and Gentile idolatry. Ahaz foolishly jumps onboard the ship of Israel just as it begins to sink. THE TEXT “In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began…
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