Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people the date October 31 is significant not only for being the Eve of All Saints (All Hallows Eve, Halloween) but as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. These theses were a list of…
It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter. "Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint,"…
The following is an excerpt from Peter Leithart's forthcoming two-volume commentary on Revelation (T&T Clark). Y ou must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings,” a voice tells John (Rev. 10:11). Then someone gives him a “reed like a rod” and instructs him to measure (11:1).…
Josiah is an ideal Davidic king in many ways. He not only “did right,” but he “walked in the ways of his father David” and “did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (2 Chronicles 34:2). At the age of 16, he began to seek Yahweh, and…
One of the best discussions of Augustine’s views on time comes from Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music, and Time (ch. 3). Following Paul Ricoeur, Begbie claims that Augustine’s distentio “is conceived as the three-fold present, and the threefold present as distentio . The distentio consists in the non-coincidence of the mind’s…
This has always been the position of the Christian Church, and from an historical perspective the present situation in evangelicalism is appalling. The early liturgies of the Church, which are still used in Episcopal and Lutheran worship, are laced with psalm phrases. The early hymns, such as the Te Deum…
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Durkheim, on John Milbank's reading ( Theology and Social Theory , 63-4), attempted to socialize Kant. Comte had already argued that Kant anticipated relativism, since he knew that knowledge had to do with “one's environmental setting” and that “this principle made transcendent metaphysics impossible.” Biology and sociology were to make…
In his Bloodtaking and Peacemaking (180-1), his study of Icelandic society, William Ian Miller distinguishes between feuds and “other types of violence like war, duels, or simple revenge killings that involve no one beyond the killer and his victim.” While he recognizes the difficulties of definition, he lays out seven…
Lamech's song in Genesis 4 is today read as a taunt and a warning. “I have killed a man for wounding me,” he tells his wives, and a boy for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy sevenfold” (Genesis 4:23-24). But there is another reading, one involving…
R. Chris Hassel has compiled a dictionary of every religion-related work he could find in Shakespeare's plays and poems. The entries in Shakespeare's Religious Language are usually divided into three parts - a definition, a compilation of Shakespeare's uses of the term, and references to contemporary or near-contemporary writers (Donne…
Ted Grimsrud's Instead of Atonement attempts to tells the “Bible's salvation story” without appeal to the “logic of retribution.” Sacrifice, he says, was not about retribution but about the worshipers grateful response to God's saving acts; it doesn't change God's attitude toward us, and neither does the death of Jesus.…
In The Anti-social Family , recently republished by Verso, Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh lament that, for all the hubbub about changing gender roles, not all that much has changed: “A gross asymmetry in heterosexual relations remains, despite these improvements. Men still seek and are willing to pay for the…
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