Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
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Though the presence of Christ has been central to Eucharistic theology, Thomas O'Loughlin ( The Eucharist ) argues that in Tridentine Catholicism”the dominant thinking about the event of physical engagement with the Eucharist was imagined in terms of a sacred commodity. The priest ‘confected' the Eucharist, it was reserved for…
Early in his Forgiveness in Victorian Literature , Richard Gibson quotes Sarah Beckwith's observation that “promising and forgiving [are] acts of making community” (27). Gibson draws on Hannah Arendt's analysis to fill out the picture. Promises reduce the unpredictability of the future, while “forgiveness confronts the crisis of the past.…
Margaret Doody's Jane Austen's Names is a treasure chest. On the assumption that “an artist cannot do anything slovenly,” Doody explores the historical significance of the real place names that appear in Austen's novels, teases out the puns in the characters' names, suggests that Austen was sensitive to the ethnic…
Key terms of ancient philosophy are rare or entirely absent in the New Testament. Aristotle considered the study of causes ( aitia ) and principles ( archai ) to be the subject matter of first philosophy ( Metaphysics A.1,981b28), and he defines metaphysics as the study “of the things which…
Norberto Bobbio ( Left and Right ) claims that left and right are different because of their different evaluations of equality. He starts from the uncontroversial fact that people are equal in certain respects, unequal in others, and claims that “We can then correctly define as egalitarians those who ,…
John Rawls's notion of “difference principle” is an alternative to a meritocratic regime, but it is also different from equality of result. As Michael Sandell explains in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , Rawls denies that the difference principle eliminates distinctions between persons. The difference principle aims at the…
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