Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Inspired by our recent podcast on Christmas and Advent music recommendations, we offer here a list of excellent recordings that are sure to enrich your Advent and Christmas season. Praetorius: Mass for Christmas Morning Paul McCreesh with the Gabrieli Consort and Players Amazon | Spotify | Apple Music 2. Christmas…
In the year 1483 in the city of Nuremberg, the leaders of the renowned Saint Lawrence Church were seeking to redesign their altar, and above the table where the priests presided over the eucharist, they wanted new art installed above the prestigious Krell altar. What they decided on took everyone…
The consequences of disobedience start with exile from the garden of God and the Tree of Yahweh, but they do not end there. They cascade down through the structure of the dynastic order. Everything which had previously been given in the Kingdom of Elohim is either taken back or curtailed…
Parallelism: A Course Correction If you have ever studied Hebrew poetry, you have probably heard its basic poetic feature described as “parallelism.” Hebrew poetry is not metered, it does not rhyme, it does not employ many of the common poetical tropes, but its distinctive (and almost universal) feature is commonly…
In The Crown and the Courts , David C. Flatto traces the development of the idea of judicial independence in Jewish commentaries on the Scriptures – particularly Deuteronomy 17 – from the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. These periods roughly span 400 BC to 300 AD. Flatto does not…
A curious feature of the Infancy Narratives in the Gospel of Luke is the naming of John the Baptist. When the angel appears to Zechariah, he is instructed to give his promised son the name John (Luke 1:13). On the day of John’s circumcision, Luke tells us that “they [presumably…
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Brian Leftow ends his 1995 Modern Schoolman article with this: “Anselm’s appeal to fittingness, then, might serve to undermine the claim the value of efficiency has on God’s choices. For if beauty can trump efficiency, it could be a rational virtue for a perfectly wise being to act inefficiently, if…
In a couple earlier posts , I took a look at the aesthetic dimensions of Anselm’s theory of the atonement. He certainly begins with a patristic atonement theory stressing the poetic symmetry of fall and redemption, and aesthetic concepts keep cropping up all along. But it seems that he abandons…
In a 1995 article in Modern Schoolman on Anselm’s theory of atonement, Brian Leftow offers this list of “incidental benefits” that, Anselm claims, follow from God’s choice to save through incarnation and cross. It’s a demonstration of the “elegance” of the atonement. The rest of this post is directly quoted…
According to Bavinck ( Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume , 442-3), vicarious satisfaction means that Christ gives to God all that He demands from us, which we are incapable of giving: “The demand posed by God to fallen humanity was twofold: one, that humans would keep the law perfectly,…
A characteristically hilarious rant from Tom Shone about movie directors as “masters”: “it must be a terrific thrill to boss people around like that, and be rude to the press, and stick conversations about life, plants, astronomy into a movie on someone else’s dime just because one can, because one…
Take a look at James Jordan’s second essay in a series on “Continuing the Reformation” at the Trinity House site.
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