Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This newsletter summarizes everything that has been written and argued in Biblical Chronology to date. The Bible is filled with chronological information. Some would dismiss the idea that this chronological information can and should be systematized. We have to say, however, that if the scattered information about the tri-unity of…
At the Biblical Horizons Conference on Worship and Sacrifice , held 17-21 August, 1992, we explored the meaning of the five major sacrifices in considerable depth. 1 During the last, the centrality of the male lamb (the ram) in the sacrificial system was briefly discussed. I want in this essay…
As we saw last time, Uzziah became king of Judah in the 27th year of Jeroboam II, the year A.M. 3204. He reigned for 52 years. He was basically a good and devout king, but toward the end of his life he recapitulated the fall of Adam by trying to…
We have now arrived at the reign of Jeroboam II. When Jeroboam II came to the throne of Northern Israel, Amaziah was reigning in Judah. After the death of Amaziah, there was an interregnum of eleven years, during which Judah was governed by Israel. During those years, the son of…
Several years ago I wrote an essay, “Theses on Paedocommunion,” in which I argued that allowing all baptized and non-excommunicated persons to the table of the Lord was Biblical and desirable. (A copy of this essay is available for a donation from Biblical Horizons .) During the past several years…
The question of whether the Church stands “against” culture, is “of” or “above” culture, or seeks to “transform” culture cannot be answered in abstraction from a particular cultural context. To be sure, in many ways the Church’s message and relation to the world cannot change; the Church must, in season…
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Daniel Barber ( Modern Theology ) notes that “particularity cannot be reduced to universality. Therefore we have a philosophical reason for approaching Jesus through particularity: sufficient reason, when conceived as universality, is insufficient; causal frameworks cannot negotiate sufficiently with elements of chance and contingency; ‘universality’ cannot be thought of as…
Andrew Bacevich ( The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War ) writes, “Americans in our time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the…
Howe, again, points out that the most obvious “imperial” project in US history is the one we take most for granted, the conquest of the American continent: “it is the internal expansion of the continental USA, across the intervening hundred years, which evokes the most direct parallels with empire-building elsewhere.…
Stephen Howe ( Empire: A Very Short Introduction ) admits that nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian empire “scorned it as the ‘prison-house of nations,” and that to the intellectuals of Vienna, the empire was “a senile absurdity.” Still, “the very existence of those nationalist, cultural, and intellectual movements, able to express…
Gerald Schlabach notes that critiques of Constantinianism pose temptations of various sorts, just as Constantinianism itself does. Insofar as such critiques posit a “fall” for the church, “they tend to be dysfunctional - not just for ecumenical debate, but also for ethical discernment within those churches that historically have defined…
Travis Kroeker ( Journal of Religious Ethics , 2005) argues that Yoder is closer to Augustine than his dismissal of Augustine as a “Constantinianism” implies: “Augustine’s theological corpus is nothing if not exegetical and historical, though, of course, it is also true that Augustine freely appropriates the ‘gold and silver…
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