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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Jesus is described twice in Revelation as the “root of David” (5:5; 22:16). “Son of David” or “Seed of David” makes sense; Jesus comes from the Davidic line. But Jesus is not only the fruit, but the root of the Davidic house. He is the original Anointed One before who…
In a 1984 JBL article, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon suggested that the boat in Mark’s gospel represents a “mediator” between sea and land, and pointed out that Jesus treats the sea as if it were land (walking on it, showing no concern for the unsteadiness of the waves, etc.). If we…
PROVERBS 21:20 The verse could be translated, more woodenly, as “Stores desired and oil in the habitation of the wise; but the foolish Adam swallows it.” The verse contrasts the conduct of the wise and of the foolish, and the basic contrast is between the wise man who has things…
Well, a bit of looking pays off. One Justin Champion has written a study of priestcraft in early Enlightenment England, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (Cambridge 1992), which is available in its entirety online at: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/catalogue/viewcat.php?id=OTHE00029. Chapter 5 begins with a paragraph that links the attacks on priestcraft with the…
Writing of Spinoza, Jonathan Israel ( Radical Enlightenment ) notes that Spinoza outlines “the concept of priestcraft as a system of organized imposture and deception, rooted in credulousness and superstitution, which loomed so large in the subsequent history of the Enlightenment and was to receive massive amplification in the books…
Not of the Hitchens-Dawkins-Harris variety, but of the seventeenth century variety. The four figures most often attacked for formulating a thoroughgoing atheistic perspective were Spinoza (for his biblical work as well as his metaphysics), Hobbes, La Peyrere (author of Pre-Adamites ), and Lodewijk Meyer (author of Philosophia Scripturae Interpres ).…
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