Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…
The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…
Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…
The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…
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Auden distinguished Christian and pagan tragedy: “Greek tragedy is the tragedy of necessity, i.e., the felling aroused in the spectators is ‘What a pity it had to be this way’: Christian tragedy is the tragedy of possibility, ‘What a pity it was this way when it might have been otherwise.’”
Critics of John’s gospel commonly claim that it is closer to something from the Orphic mysteries than from Judaism. One wonders if these critics have ever read the gospel, which mentions the Jews over sixty times, shows Jesus attending all manner of Jewish feasts, focuses its attention on the conflicts…
Rosenstock-Huessy does not especially like Calvin’s doctrine of double predestination, but at the same time he argues that the doctrine preserves necessary within Calvin’s theology. (This from an essay entitled “Generations of Faith,” in Volume 1 of his Collected Papers.) His discussion begins with the claim that “our school children…
INTRODUCTION This week, we start a brief topical series on the family. This being Lent, we want to look at family life from the perspective of the cross. THE TEXT “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also…
INTRODUCTION This week, we start a brief topical series on the family. This being Lent, we want to look at family life from the perspective of the cross. THE TEXT “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also…
3 John 5-6: Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and especially when they are strangers; and they bear witness to your love before the church; and you will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. The conflict…
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