Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Click HERE for part 1. III This leads to a further question. I have argued that silence cannot by itself establish a Scriptural principle, but does Scripture’s silence carry any weight in itself? Does the fact that something is unbiblical in a weak sense tell us anything at all? In…
Although nowadays gap theories are associated with dispensationalism, it was not always so. In the nineteenth century, scholars from a variety of backgrounds (Anglican, Reformed, and proto-fundamentalist) seem to have become fascinated by gaps. If you are not familiar with what I am talking about, this newsletter will acquaint you…
If the debate over Operation Rescue has proven anything, it has proven that there is absolutely no consensus among evangelicals in general, or among "reconstructionists" in particular, about how to use the Bible to judge political actions and movements. Each side of the debate claims biblical authority for its position,…
Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?"…
Umberto Eco’s "The Name of the Rose" was certainly one of the best literary works of the past decade, though the film version hardly measured up to it. Now Eco has given us a new novel, "Foucault’s Pendulum." Like Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum reflects on the limitations of human knowledge, and…
From time to time people ask me about "interpretive maximalism." They want to know what it is, and sometimes want to know if it represents some departure from the Reformed grammatico-historical, Biblico-theological approach to the Bible. I have something of a problem with these questions, because "interpretive maximalism" is not…
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Anatolios makes the striking observation that Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover” is even more transcendent than Plato’s form of the good. For Plato, being is self-communicative, and his most exalted realities (the form of the good, the forms) are participatable. Not Aristotle’s UM, which just thinks thinking in total self-absorption, while everything…
Henry Chadwick notes that the “alienation of Egypt and much of Syria from the Chalcedonian government was a serious political matter, and gravely weakened those key provinces before the Moslem invasions.”
Were the ecumenical councils infallible? Many in the early church clearly didn’t consider them so. The most vigorous, and vicious, arguments over Arius took place between Nicea and First Constantinople, and the Monophysite controversy continued for a century and more after Chalcedon had condemned Eutyches (as well as Nestorius). Nestorianism…
Henry Chadwick notes that Julian the Apostate tried to gain Jewish support by proposing to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem: “although Julian had little but contempt for Judaism, he was well aware that a proposal to restore sacrificies in a rebuilt temple at Jerusalem would touch the Christians at a…
Much of the theology instruction in the high middle ages took the form of commentary on established texts, most importantly the Four Books of the Sentences by Peter the Lombard. Lombard’s triumph, though, was contested. As Deeana Klepper points out in her book on Nicolas of Lyra, one of the…
Jean Blum characterized Hamann’s thought as follows: “Hamann’s thought is what those who do not normally think would think if they did think.” That gets it pretty well, as does Berlin’s comment that Hamann “was a major force in transforming the ideas which hitherto had lived in small, self-isolated religious…
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