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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Sheldrake ( The Science Delusion , 10-12) explains why physicalism - the hope that physics will finally vindicate materialism - is doomed. One reason is the “Cosmological Anthropic Principle,” which claims that “if the laws and constants of nature had been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang,…
During his PhD research, Rupert Sheldrake ( The Science Delusion , 1-2) made an original discovery about plant cells: “dying cells play a major part in the regulation of plant growth, releasing the plant hormone auxin as they break down in the process of ‘programmed cell death.’ Inside the growing…
Constantine permitted transfer of legal cases from civil to ecclesiastical courts, and also permitted ministers to manumit slaves. Both, Potter says ( Constantine the Emperor , 181 ), were steps that effectively turned clergy into civic authorities. On the first decision, Potter notes that “The main problem with Constantine’s decision,…
TD Barnes has vigorously contested popular ideas of the Edict of Milan: It was not issued in Milan and didn’t affect Italy; it didn’t legalize Christianity, which was already legal; it was not an edict. This can leave the impression that the declaration of Licinius on June 13, 313 was…
Potter ( Constantine the Emperor , 95) asks what Constantine was doing during the great persecution. His answers are speculative; we don’t and can’t know for sure, since Constantine’s feelings and thoughts were never recorded. But it is a worthwhile speculation: “He was a visible member of the court; many…
David Potter’s Constantine the Emperor has many virtues. Potter is hugely well-informed about Roman history, and is able to place Constantine in his context like few others. His discussion of Diocletian’s “interventionist” policy (his Price Edict and his edicts regarding Christianity) is superb, as is his sense of the limits…
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