Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Timon Cline wrote recently that “theonomists” didn’t run Puritan New England. 1 He is correct, in his major thesis, that the claim that “Puritanism and the natural law tradition are antithetical” is “wildly ahistorical.” Mr. Cline demonstrates that Puritans repeatedly extolled natural law. Besides the Puritan sources Mr. Cline mustered,…
The Church is the land of the walking trees. In Mark’s Gospel, the identity of Jesus is slowly and progressively revealed. Though St. Mark announces at the beginning of his narrative that Jesus Christ is “the Son of God” (1:1), this is a reality that must be spoon-fed to His…
All Scripture is of ultimate significance as the word of God, but it may be helpful to think about what makes a book (in this case, a letter) possibly unique within the canon. In this case, the “general” nature of Ephesians should stand out, but it often is not recognized…
Where do we draw the lines between what is right and wrong? This question is fundamental to civilization, fundamental to a free society. To put this question in the bluntest and most offense terms: if there is a time to kill — which Solomon says there is — whom shall…
This article was originally posted in May of 1994. We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The early Church tended to speak of Him as Father, Word, and Spirit. In this short essay, I want to suggest some other ways to think of the Trinity, ways that…
Jonah’s Home The story of JONAH belongs in the book of KINGS. JONAH balances the story of the unnamed Judean prophet (1K13) in KINGS’ literary structure. Each story describes a journeying prophet that crosses land or sea to confront a wayward king. The two stories are located during the reigns…
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Mark 10:29-30: Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that He shall receive a hundred times as much now in the…
We think we possess things by holding on to them. We own our house and our car and our cat and our certificates of deposit when we have free and unhindered use of them. If there’s a new lock on the door when you come home from work, you don’t…
Another hurrah to Rahner. He notes that part of the standard view of grace among post-Reformation Catholics is the notion that grace is “above man’s conscious spiritual and moral life.” It is an object of faith, but it never penetrates to consciousness or experience: “only nature and its acts constitute…
Enough beating up on Rahner for the moment. He has this statement in Nature and Grace : “there has been no ‘chemically pure’ description of pure nature, but mixed in with it there are traces of elements of historical nature, i.e., nature possessing grace. Who is to say that the…
Rahner (still working in his little book, Nature and Grace ) distinguishes between “being ordered to grace” and “being directed to grace in such a way that without the actual gift of this grace it would all be meaningless.” He affirms the first, not the second. A created spirit “is…
Rahner says that the Beatific vision is “through grace” and comes as a “free gift, not due to [man] by nature, not pledged to him by his creation (so that our creation, which was a free act of God, not due to us, and the free gift of grace to…
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