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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Mark Horne continues his studies in Romans at the Trinity House site.
Prior to the founding of America, argues Hannah Arendt in On Revolution , political orders were justified and legitimated by appeal to absolutes: “a divinity, not nature but nature’s God, not reason but a divinely informed reason” gave validity to political order and buttressed political power. Over time, the early…
Theory, Nietzsche argued, arises from the will to “correct existence.” Taking his cues from Nietzsche, Lyotard describes the difference between “pious” and “pagan” theorizing. The former is guilty of Nietzsche’s charge: Since Plato, Lyotard argues, philosophers have attempted to formulate a perfect theory of justice or freedom on the grounds…
In their contribution to American Space/American Place: Geographies of the Contemporary United States , John Agnew and Joanne Sharp describe the context and import of Frederick Jackson Turner’s famed “Frontier Thesis.” Turner wrote in the context of the downturn of the 1890s, and his argument was partly about the future…
Michael Miller’s essay in Christian Theology and Market Economics focuses on “Business as a moral enterprise.” In part, he offers a summary of John Paul II’s teaching on economics and business, especially as expressed in the encyclical Centessimus Annus . As one might expect, John Paul puts business into the…
In his contribution to Christian Theology and Market Economics , Stephen Grabill reviews the “pre-Enlightenment” history of economic theory. That is to say, scholastic economics. For many economic historians, the notion of a scholastic economic theory is fallacious, and Exhibit #1 is always the scholastic prohibition of usury, grounded in…
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