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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Here’s another sermon outline, again shamelessly borrowing material from Jim Jordan ‘s From Bread to Wine . Priestly Service, 1 Kings 4:1-20 INTRODUCTION Priests are servants in a royal household. They live to serve their master, and they are regulated by detailed rules and regulations. The priestly stage of life…
No doubt I’ve said this before, but perhaps not so clearly: 1) Derrida makes the point that all language is fundamentally metaphorical, and that even what appears as pure dialectic is rhetoric all the way down. 2) Derrida says that because of this communication and meaning are indeterminate, deferred, etc.…
No doubt I’ve said this before, but perhaps not so clearly: 1) Derrida makes the point that all language is fundamentally metaphorical, and that even what appears as pure dialectic is rhetoric all the way down. 2) Derrida says that because of this communication and meaning are indeterminate, deferred, etc.…
According to the etymological and historical study of Wilfred Cantwell Smith , “believe” once had the range of meaning of the Greek PISTEUO and the Latin CREDO, and meant basically to entrust or commit oneself to something, to pledge allegiance. As Smith says, this notion had changed significantly by the…
Before Nabokov wrote his scandalous book , one Heinz von Lichberg had published an 18-page story about a middle-age man who falls in love with the daughter of the woman who runs the boarding house where he lives. He has sex, and in the end the girl dies, while the…
A new edition of Daniel Defoe ‘s The Political History of the Devil (hitherto unknown to me) has recently been published, and receives a review in the April 2 issue of the TLS . The book covers not only Satan’s involvement in biblical history, but his continuing involvement in the…
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