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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The word “number” (Greek, arithmos ) occurs ten times in Revelation, and the word occurs in climactic sections of the major sections of the book. It occurs first in 5:11, describing the “number” of the angels who join in worship, at the climax of the rippling expansion of praise from…
After the flood, the sons of Noah repopulated the earth. Shem’s first son was Elam (Genesis 10:22; cf. Genesis 14:1), the ancestor of the Elamite people that lived in the South of present-day Iran, with Susa as their capital. Elam is apparently the firstborn of the Shemites, displaced from that…
In his Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science , Richard Yeo further dispels the myth of the lone scientific genius. Early modern science made its advances because of collaboration among researchers. And they used the highest of contemporary high-tech to pass around their research - the notebook. It was…
Mehdi Hasan presents evidence in an article in the New Statesman that jihadists aren’t the most devout of Muslims. Often the opposite. “In 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5’s behavioural science unit, was leaked to the Guardian . It revealed that, ‘far from being religious zealots,…
Most ancient myths and philosophies, and not a few modern scientific and philosophical theories, posit or assume that matter is eternal. Does that matter? Yes. If matter is eternal, then creation can only be control, limitation, ordering. If matter is eternal, creativity can only be negative. If matter is eternal,…
It’s often suggested today that any argument or claim drawn from revelation is “sectarian.” In order to make a “universal” claim, we need to ground it in something more general than a particular revelation. Christians assume this as much as secularists. Many think we have to move from revelation to…
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