Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Understanding Shakespeare’s Biblical references is vital for the interpretation of many, if not all, of Shakespeare’s plays. For Othello , it is especially important, not only because the interpretation of the play is contested among various approaches — feminist, homosexual, post-colonial, Marxist, Freudian, new historical, and others — but also…
Mike Allen of Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, scores some points in his review of The End of Protestantism . He lodges the fair complaint that my rhetoric sometimes outruns my evidence. He argues that more stress on the present reality of the church’s unity deepens the tragedy of division; divisions…
I begin with two observations. First, on any millennial view, the Christian account of history is progressive, moving from the garden to the city. It is eschatological not only in that there is an end, but that the end is a glorified beginning, not merely a return to origins. To…
The church is a new form of polity that erupts into the world as much as the Son of God comes into the world. It’s a real-world political alternative to the polities of the ancient world. It resolves many of the political dilemmas of the ancient world, though not simply…
In my last post , I explained how Baptists really have a “one-ordinance-one sacrament” ecclesiology. I said this: “what Baptists really believe, in modern parlance, is that there is one ordinance (baptism which is a sign or symbol only) and one sacrament (the Lord’s Supper in which feeding upon Jesus…
One of the most extensive and penetrating responses to the Yoder-Hauerwas attack on Constantiniansm is found in Oliver O’Donovan’s Desire of Nations , in a chapter entitled “The Obedience of Rulers.” O’Donovan defines the word “Christendom” as “a historical idea,” specifically “the idea of a professedly Christian secular political order,…
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In the course of a review of Timothy Ryback’s recent book on Hitler’s library, Anthony Grafton comments on the connection between critique and occultism in early twentieth-century thought: “it is wrong to dismissed the esoteric strains in German thought in the early decades of the twentieth century simply because they…
Christopher Caldwell ends an intriguing article on William Bagehot ( Weekly Standard , 12/22) with this: “To be blunt, credit is successfully reestablished when financial elites say, ‘When.’ Credit is close to a synonym for the mood of the ruling class. To say an economy is based on credit is…
Mike Bull from Australia sent the following, which I reproduce with his permission: “We don’t know how many wise men travelled from the east, but perhaps we can make a guess via God’s deliberate typology. “We do know there were three gifts. With Christ as the human Ark of the…
Philip Jenkins has an excellent brief introduction to the thought of the Indian Muslim thinker, Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi, in the December 24 issue of TNR . He writes: “His guiding assumption was a totalistic view of Islam: Everything in the universe was God’s creation, so Muslims could freely use…
Priests used lots to select a scapegoat on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:8-10). Joshua used lots to locate Achan the troubler of Israel; Achan was a scapegoat, whose death cleansed the people so they could defeat Ai. Haman threw lots, trying to pinpoint the time for offering the scapegoat…
Some Reformed charge that celebration of the seasons of the church calendar is Judaizing, a reversion to the slavery of the Old Covenant. More the opposite: The Reformed anti-calendar view says that we keep appointments with God only when He strictly and explicitly commands it. They do not think human…
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