Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Reformers did not start out with a plan to found separated churches. Their goal was to reform the entire Latin church. In this they failed. The paradox is sharp, and we need to feel its point and its edge if we Protestants are to reckon honestly with our history…
Conversion is a turning from sin to Christ. Now, let's think about that. Does conversion happen only once in a lifetime, or does it happen many times? That is the question, I believe, that needs answering. From my experience, and from my understanding of the Bible and of Christianity, there…
Israel was supposed to be a priest to the nations (Ex. 19:6). Her water would cause their trees to grow. This was signified to all men when Israel came out of Egypt, for "then they came to Elim, where they were twelve springs of water and seventy date palms, and…
Rousing Soviet songs surround us as we pass through a gloomy gauntlet of titanic statues on our way to Kyiv’s Museum of the Great Patriotic War. My friends, a Polish and a Ukrainian pastor, remember the songs, which played incessantly on the radio during their childhood. The sculpture complex depicts…
This is the second installment of a two-part article. Click HERE to read Part I. The fourth perspective on ceremony is that of the action of the Lord's Supper. As we noted before, the inauguration of the Lord's Supper preceded its interpretation. Jesus did not at that point give an…
The best courses are those that make you see the Bible, the church, or the world differently. The recent Theopolis Architecture Course with Daniel Lee did exactly that. Architect Daniel Lee began the week with architectural theory, continued through the week taking students through a history of architectural practice, and…
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T he great question haunting late medieval piety was that of the inadequacy of human piety. As Berndt Hamm puts it ( Reformation of Faith ), the “harrowing question” was that of the “spiritual inadequacy” of Christians (88). The late medieval answer was to reduce the requirements necessary to meet…
I n his Landscape, Liberty and Authority , Tim Fulford examines the paradox of William Gilpin's travel writings and tour-leading in the picturesque wilds of Wales, England, and Scotland. Gilpin was aware that “the picturesque might be socially dangerous,” so much so that he apologizes to the noble landowners whose…
I n his contribution to Signifying Identities , Fredrik Barth suggests that our notion of political, economic and social boundaries is an extension of the feeling that a tool extends the body: When you hold a knife or a spoon in your hand and use it as an implement, the…
G uy G. Stroumsa writes in The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity that “For Weber, as is well known, the most striking ‘disenchantment of the world' in history occurred with the rise of the ‘inner-worldly' asceticism ( innerweltliche Askese ) of the Calvinist Reformation. And yet, it…
M ichel de Certeau ( The Writing of History , 126-7) quotes Alphonse Dupront on the post-Reformation situation of the church: “a first piece of raw material, as obvious as capital for the modern mind, is the progressive promotion of heresy in confession and of confession in church. . .…
In a 1971 essay, H.G. Koenigsberger challenged the notion that the Reformation broke up a unified Europe. He criticizes historians and social scientists for assuming a norm of unity: “We have assumed that the theological and ecclesiastical unity of Catholic Christendom was its natural condition and that, in consequence, the…
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