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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1 Chronicles 23:24-27 is arranged chiastically: A. Levites numbered from 20 years and up. B. David said. C. Yahweh rests and dwells. C'. Levites no longer carry tent and implements. B'. Words of David. A'. Levites numbered from 20 years and up. C' is disputable, but the structure nearly forces…
O ne paragraph illustrates both the reasons I admire Christian Wiman's 2013 searingly honest My Bright Abyss , and the reasons I find the book frustrating to the point of irritation. A poet and erstwhile editor of Poetry , Wiman came to Christianity as an adult in the midst of…
T he authors of Ritual and its Consequences (104–6) note a contrast between civilizations that are bound by authoritative rituals and those that are not. The latter are deeply concerned with sincerity: “ Civilizations or movements with a diminished concern for ritual have an overwhelming concern with sincerity, which we…
“P riestcraft” was one of the charges regularly lodged by skeptics against clergy and theologians in early modern Europe. It connoted obscurantism, deception, manipulation of popular opinion. It connoted everything wrong with established Christianity, especially in its more catholic manifestations. Not all the charges of “priestcraft” were directed at clergy.…
O ne of the virtues of Anthony J. Carroll's Protestant Modernity is his effort to put flesh on the bony term “secularization,” often batted about in an airily sociological fashion. On-the-ground secularization is easiest to spot in Revolutionary France, when institutions and personnel and property and records were removed from…
K eith G. Meador devotes his contribution to The Secular Revolution to an analysis of the therapeutic takeover of American Protestantism. He focuses on the role of the Christian Century under the editorship of Charles Clayton Morrison, who used the magazine to advance a “scientific” and simplified Christianity supposedly fit…
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