Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Continuing through The Worship of the English Puritans by Horton Davies: The author gives some of his own appraisals rather than immediately quoting Durel, even though that is how he began his chapter. In Davies’ opinion, while the Puritans would invoke their own interpretation of Scripture in order to condemn,…
What follows are from a couple of posts on my blog. I hoped to do a series. If I do follow up, I will probably want to do it here on the BH blog rather than my own. Feedback welcome: It is no secret that some have been scathingly critical…
Jeremy Sexton wrote this in an earlier line of discussion: “Along those lines, I think what we most often miss in our theology of baptism (though Calvin didn’t miss this) is that Christian baptism — if it “is” anything that came before — is Jesus’ water baptism. In our baptism,…
Jeff pointed out that baptism is not Christian circumcision . Looking at the comments, I think it might be helpful to point out that Israel was not the Church . In the new creation, the idea of an “unbaptized Christian” is either very temporary or an anomaly. Those who came…
Once a upon a time, one Sunday morning, a pastor mounted his pulpit for the sermon and said the following: A troubled young man walked into a downtown high-rise building. As he approached the directory on the wall, he took out a small booklet and looked back and forth from…
If you are, say, leading a Bible study in Genesis, you might notice that right after the covenant is renewed and circumcision is established (ch 17) that we see Abraham eating and drinking with God (ch 18). After that meal, God makes a point of saying the he should share…
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In his discussion of penitential seasons, Doug Wilson also offers this argument: “what gospel is implicitly preached by the practice of drawing out the process of repentance and forgiveness? It is a false gospel. Now I am not saying that fellow Christians who observe their church year in this way…
Saussure says that speakers know almost nothing about the history of the words they speak, and this means that “the linguist who wishes to understand a state must discard all knowledge of everything that produced it and ignore diachrony. He can enter the mind of speakers only by completely suppressing…
Brueggemann again. He writes as if power were necessarily oppressive, but with some qualifications he has a profound point: “The replacing of numbness with compassion, that is, the end of cynical indifference and the beginning of noticed pain, signals a social revolution . . . . The capacity of feel…
In medieval iconography, John the Evangelist is depicted as an eagle, and this portrait expresses the opinion of the early church fathers, that John wrote a “spiritual” gospel which has a “loftier spiritual purpose” than the other gospels. John is the eagle because he soars “aloft to contemplate and proclaim…
Doug Wilson recently preached a sermon arguing against the adoption of “penitential seasons” of Advent and Lent. He makes a number of arguments and his reservations are worth considering. Here I want to respond to one of his arguments (from his sermon notes, online at Christkirk.com):”if we were to adopt…
Walter Brueggemann ( Prophetic Imagination ) cites Hannah Arendt’s claim that Jesus’ offer of forgiveness was his “most endangering action because if a society does not have an apparatus for forgiveness, then its members are fated to live forever with the consequences of any violation. Thus the refusal to forgive…
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