Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…
The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…
Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…
The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…
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Matthew 26:31-75 is organized mainly as a series of small chiasms The first is in verses 31-35: A. Jesus predicts the fall of the disciples, based on Scripture, vv 31-32 B. Peter protests, v 33 C. Jesus predicts Peter’s triple denial, v 34 B’. Peter protests again, v 35a A’.…
Responding to Sinclair Ferguson’s defense of infant baptism in Baptism: Three Views , Anthony Lane attacks the use of “sign and seal” as the “controlling framework” for one’s theology of baptism.  He points out that for Ferguson the “proper” function of baptism is to “display and portray God’s grace,” and…
The notion that salvation is illumination is often criticized for being too intellectualist.  Jaroslav Pelikan sums up the criticisms of Athanasius’ use of this image by saying “the impression was almost unavoidable that the enlightenment given in salvation applied primarily to the mind and the intellect” and his language sometimes…
Why the incarnation?  The eternal Son enters humanity to stretch it to its limits, and beyond.  By becoming flesh and living and dying and rising in flesh, the Son makes it big enough for God to dwell in. More precisely, the Spirit: The Son stretches out the flesh He assumes,…
Every word we speak, Derrida argues, wanders off on its own, and we can’t protect or control it. True enough with regard to human words.  But God’s Word is a living Person, the eternal Son, a Word equal to the speaker with the resources to fend for Himself.  This Word,…
In the previous post, Jim Rogers asked what can morally be done about enemies who use innocents are human shields?  That’s a difficult question, but I’ve found Daniel Bell’s discussion helpful ( Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State ). Bell takes…
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