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,…
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Cryptic as always, Hamann writes ( Aesthetica in Nuce ): “Speak, that I might see you! — This desire was fulfilled in creation, which is an address to the creature through the creature.” Dickson notes that this suggests that creation pre-exists itself such that its desire is answered by the…
Hamann can repeat this Derridean scandal, quite literally. As Gwen Dickson puts it, “Hamann’s conception of language as speech as a ‘translation’ reveals that at the basis of his thinking there is no language-world dichotomy; language, after all, is part of the world, and moreover the ‘world’ or ‘reality’ or…
Athanasius insists that the Word is one, while creatures are many. He anticipates the Arian objection that there is also oneness in creation - one earth and one son. But the oneness of the creation is different from the oneness of the Word. Creatures are one “with respect to its…
When the Arians claim that the Father made the Son to make the world, they imply that it is unworthy of God to be so directly involved in the details of the created world. Athanasius ( Orations Against the Arians ) sees that the Arian God is prissy, disdainful of…
Rorty: “Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments. Great edifying philosophers are reactive and offer satires, parodies, aphorisms. They know their work loses its point when they period they were reacting against is over. They are intentionally peripheral. Great systematic philosophers, like great scientists, build for eternity. Great edifying…
Some scattered notes on Isaiah 33, the product of listening to students comment on the passage in exams throughout the week. 1) Verse 1 includes an interesting variation on the lex talionis. Destroyers will be destroyed, and the treacherous will be dealt with treacherously. But the justice that the Lord…
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