Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…
In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…
Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…
In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…
Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…
The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…
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A couple of quotations from Hart’s biography of Nevin: “The force of the question in the end is nothing less than this, whether the original catholic doctrine concerning the Church, as it stood in universal authority through all ages before the Reformation, is to be received and held still as…
John Milbank’s opening essay in the recently-released Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (edited by James KA Smith and James Olthuis) is a challenging critique of Calvin and the Reformed tradition, one that I hope to interact with more in the future. One particularly striking passage had to do with…
Yahweh is the trickster God of 1-2 Kings. He tricks the Moabites into thinking that the three kings have slaughtered each other (2 Kings 3), and Israel rises from their camp and slaughters them. He tricks the Arameans in the opposite way: chasing them away from their camp so that…
Why the delay of judgment throughout 1-2 Kings? Two reasons: First, judgment is passed, but Yahweh waits for the sin of the Amorites to come to completion, for sin to ripen to be utterly sinful. Second, Yahweh gives time for the declaration of judgment to work repentance among a remnant.…
Another aspect of the “satire” of royal power in 1-2 Kings comes out when we examine scenes of womena appealing for help before an authority. Early in Kings, women appeal to Kings and receive what they need (Bath-sheba and David; prostitutes and Solomon). Sheba is overwhelmed by Solomon’s kingdom. For…
Why does Yahweh send two prophets to the Omrides? Two witnesses no doubt. But their ministries are so similar in many respects; why double it? And what, if any, are the differences between them? One difference is geography. Elijah spends a good bit of the narrative on the far side…
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