Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For years I have read little posts by fresh new Papal converts that assert that Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, etc., believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. So did Turretin. Setting aside the question of whether these men believed that this notion was important or not — and Calvin, at least,…
The previous discussion led to several points that I’d like to take up in like to take up in more detail. For the sake of discussion, I’ll number them for ease of consideration. 1. Typological “evidences” for Mary as perpetual virgin, queen of heaven, etc. etc. I assert here that…
BMEV, or “Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin,” should not be an issue for any Protestant today, but clamor from various quarters means that we need once again to “get real” with the Biblical data here. Herewith is a reworking of a recent essay on the subject originally published in Biblical Horizons. Early…
When I hear from time to time of some young evangelical Presbyterian going into Roman Catholicism, I ask myself, “Why bother? You’re already in a church pretty much like what the Reformers rejected.” In the Medieval church, the congregation did little but watch while the priest and choir did everything.…
The “New Perspective” sheds light on what the New Testament means by the “mystery” of God. The mystery theme is quite pervasive in the apostolic writings, and shows up across genre lines, in the gospels, the epistles, and Revelation. One could even make a solid case that the revelation of…
THIS should be a link to the Sanctus I put together for use at the Biblical Horizons Conferences. Some churches have been using it also.
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“The Word was God,” says John. Where’d he get that? Genesis 15:1 is the first place where Scripture uses the phrase “word of Yahweh” ( dabar-YHWH ), and already here the use of the phrase hints that the dabar is a person. The word of Yahweh “came” to Abram (15:1,…
Peter Olivi set out a scheme of prophecy chronology from Adam to Abraham to the destruction of Jerusalem. The accuracy of this is not the point, but rather the claim that the end of the temple was a decisive redemptive-historical event. “Ab Adam usque ad primam primissionem factam Abrahe, Genesis…
A number of readers have suggested that I was wrongly critical of Athanasius’s claim that without God’s sustenance creation tends toward nothing; I said that this implied that creation has some tendency “independent” of God. The readers point out that Athanasius’s claim is exactly that creation has no independence and…
Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream develops a mythological monistic materialist ontology in which multiplicity develops from an original “polyp” but where nothing ever becomes really distinct from the whole or from anything else. There is no freedom, no real otherness, no real possibility of love. D’Alembert describes this ontology while masturbating in…
Athanasius repeatedly says that created things, having come from nothing, have an inherent tedency to move toward nothing again. They have to be sustained by God to remain in existence. No problem with the conclusion that God keeps things in existence. But the notion that things tend toward nothing seems…
Peter Olivi is one of a number of medieval exegetes who placed enormous significance on the fall of Jerusalem. In part, this was driven by anti-Jewish polemics; they argued that prophecies foretold that the Messiah would come and the temple sacrifice would be ended - since the temple sacrifice has…
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