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,…
Showing page 111 of 309
Showing page 8 of 43
Some Christmas reflections on what it means to receive bread from heaven over at www.firstthings.com this morning.
I don’t think I’ve ever known someone so humble and hungry to learn—even from his students, even from his undergrads—as Dr. Leithart. He loves the subjects he teaches in such an un-possessive way; he both cares for and respects his students enough to interact earnestly with their ideas. I’ve witnessed…
In one of his Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Volume 5 (International Kierkegaard Commentary) Kierkegaard analyzes the respond of Job to his suffering: “Job traced everything back to God; he did not detain his soul and quench his spirit with deliberation or explanations that only feed and foster doubt, even though the…
In her contribution to Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange (Veroffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fur Geschichte) , Beate Wagner-Hasel offers this penetrating critique of Marcel Mauss’s The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies : “Mauss indirectly completed in theoretical terms the very process of depersonalizing and…
For various reasons, we have decided to change the name of the Trinity Institute to “Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, and Cultural studies,” “Trinity House Institute” for short and “Trinity House” for shortest. We are getting a web page set up. Currently, the page includes only our mission statement,…
In a superb essay on Locke’s “social imagination” in Rethinking Modern Political Theory: Essays 1979-1983 (Cambridge Paperback Library) (21-22), John Dunn traces Locke’s project to a “simple” central concern: “As a whole this thinking can be legitimately represented as the attempt to think through the political implications of a rather…
Showing page 827 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
