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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This is the last in a series of posts summarizing the way I’ve taught an Old Testament survey to kids aged 5-11 this summer. Overall, it’s worked well. We’ve covered a lot, and the kids have learned some of the basic patterns of the Bible. It got more difficult the…
Archaeology seems to be on the margins of cultural history, the province of antiquarians. In her fascinating Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism , though, Cathy Gere traces the impact of Arthur Evans’ excavation and reconstruction of Minoan civilization on modernists from Nietzsche to Freud, Joyce to Robert Graves. Evans…
For the past several decades, Christian activists have been concerned to apply Christian standards to the political and moral issues of our day. I support the effort in principle, and agree with much of the substance. Yet something is missing. In their obsession with discovering biblical standards they haven’t paid…
Exodus 20:23-24: You shall not make other gods besides me, gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves. You shall make an altar for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and oxen; in every place…
The Ten Words deal with perennial sins. Idolaters are everywhere all the time. We all hate, lust, envy. Poison of asps is under our lips too. The Ten Words are addressed to us because they are addressed to everyone. But what use are all these detailed commandments? Why do we…
The opening pages of Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) (pp. 1-9) are a brilliant reflection on theory formation. Pierre Bourdieu examines the “theoretical distortion” that get embedded in social science, especially anthropology, when the observer ignores the “social conditions in which the…
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