Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the November 1993 issue of Open Book Peter Leithart commented briefly on gnosticism. The film 2001 is a great specimen of gnosticism, and is worth viewing as a Sunday School project for an adult class. The author of the basic story was Arthur C. Clarke, an old-school science fiction…
Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier movies display a strongly moral, even Christian, point of view, and certainly can be enjoyed by Christian viewers. His later works, such as Psycho , The Birds , and his television series, are not as clearly moral in tone. In these later efforts, Hitchcock brought humorous or…
“What art thou, thou idol ceremony?” asked Henry V during his midnight rounds of the English camp near Agincourt. His answer was that ceremony was both nothing and everything. It was nothing in the sense that it offered no guarantee that the king would be fit for office. Contrary to…
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them; and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All…
My research has led me to the conviction that there are three major periods of Biblical history, which lead to a fourth. These are the Ages of the Father, the Word, and the Spirit. The First Age, that of the Father, is recorded in the book of Genesis. It focuses…
Both Bible history and the current consensus chronology of the ancient world are tied up intimately with Egyptian history and chronology. Thus, as we broaden Biblical Chronology beyond the matter of adding up numbers and try to integrate Biblical chronology with the ancient world, the place to start would seem…
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Barth’s theology of justification has many virtues. Let me highlight only a couple of them. For starters, Barth’s is an utterly, manically theocentric account of justification. This comes through in large ways and small. One of the most striking indications of this is the way he deals with the question…
Vladimir Jankelevitch ( Le Pur et l’Impur , 11) observes that we apply the concept of purity to wine and milk, defining the purity of beverages in opposition to admixture of other ingredients. In each case “purity” prohibits mixture, especially mixture of a thing with its supposed opposite. Pure poetry…
Barth in fully Barthian regalia ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 186-7): “As God was in Christ, far from being against Himself, or at disunity with Himself, He has put into effect the freedom of His divine love, the love in which He is divinely free. He has therefore done and…
Barth famously answers Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? by talking about the “Judge judged in our place” ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 ). In a passage summarizing the gospel account of Jesus’s life, he gives this remarkable summary of the “exchange of roles” that occurs in the gospel: “Those who are to…
A great Cur Deus Homo moment from Barth ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 553): “What we men must suffer - if it is to be suffered in accordance with the righteousness of God - can be suffered for us only by God Himself as man: if, that is to say,…
“Did God need to justify Himself?” Barth asks ( Church Dogmatics, IV.1 , 567). Does He need to demonstrate His justice to human beings in the world? Barth answers, as expected, No: “He does not need anything.” True enough in the abstract: God needs nothing outside Himself. But once God…
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