Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
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Drudge couldn’t care a whit for Hillary Clinton, but his increasingly provocative headlines (most recently, “Diss-Off”) for a story on how Obama never considered Hillary as a veep candidate can have only one result: To get Hillary’s supporters, already cool toward Obama, hopping mad.
Kant regards positive religions or ecclesiastical faiths (including Christianity) as temporary moral crutches that we can shed as we approach the pure natural religion of reason. Christianity’s institutions, sacraments, dogmas, are the stoicheia leading us to enlightenment. Here we see the problematics of Christian sacramental theology, going back at least…
Weberman returns to Danto to advance his argument. He notes that Danto shies away from saying that past events change, and suggests that he did this in order to remain a realist about past events; Danto held that “past events are what they are in a mind-independent way.” He insists…
In an article in the Review of Metaphysics (1997), David Weberman argues for the “nonfixity of the historical past.” He starts from Arthur Danto’s argument that historical inquiry and writing cannot be a reconstruction available to an “ideal chronicler” who knows everything that happens the moment it happens and sets…
E. Miner wrote, that “the ability to declare typology absent is a kind of proof of sound modern critical method.” Which translated means, Skepticism about typology is the union card of serious biblical scholarship.
A. K. A. Adam offers a useful critique of what he calls “brick hermeneutics.” Taking a cue from George Herriman’s early 20th-century comic strip Krazy Kat, he describes brick hermeneutics as follows: “Most of our discourses take for granted the premise that we communicate by infusing ‘meaning’ into some expression,…
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