Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people the date October 31 is significant not only for being the Eve of All Saints (All Hallows Eve, Halloween) but as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. These theses were a list of…
It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter. "Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint,"…
The following is an excerpt from Peter Leithart's forthcoming two-volume commentary on Revelation (T&T Clark). Y ou must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings,” a voice tells John (Rev. 10:11). Then someone gives him a “reed like a rod” and instructs him to measure (11:1).…
Josiah is an ideal Davidic king in many ways. He not only “did right,” but he “walked in the ways of his father David” and “did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (2 Chronicles 34:2). At the age of 16, he began to seek Yahweh, and…
One of the best discussions of Augustine’s views on time comes from Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music, and Time (ch. 3). Following Paul Ricoeur, Begbie claims that Augustine’s distentio “is conceived as the three-fold present, and the threefold present as distentio . The distentio consists in the non-coincidence of the mind’s…
This has always been the position of the Christian Church, and from an historical perspective the present situation in evangelicalism is appalling. The early liturgies of the Church, which are still used in Episcopal and Lutheran worship, are laced with psalm phrases. The early hymns, such as the Te Deum…
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James Jordan points out in an essay on the Ascension offering that the early chapter of Genesis follow a sacrificial sequence: Sacrifice outside the garden, then Enoch ascends to the Lord, then the world is washed in the flood, and finally Noah joins his forefather on a high place. This…
Michael Oakeshott says that the university provides one central gift, the “gift of the interval”: Here was an opportunity to put aside the hot allegiances of youth without the necessity of acquiring new loyalties to take their place. Here was an interval in which a man might refuse to commit…
In his social history of Christian Worship, Frank Senn summarizes the developments of the medieval period with regard to the Eucharist. He begins by challenging the assumption that medieval society was held together by “the church.” He notes that the church was often divided and conflicted, and that there were…
Eucharistic prayers were eventually removed almost entirely from the Eucharistic celebration, so that the church ended up, as Louis Bouyer has provocatively put it, “a eucharist in which there is no longer and eucharist at all properly speaking.” To grasp what Bouyer is saying, it is helpful to cite some…
Christoph Schwobel has a dense but helpful overview of Pannenberg’s theology in David Ford’s The Modern Theologians. Pannenberg insists from the beginning of his career that history is revelation, and his whole theology is an effort to hammer out the implications of that claim. Like Barth, he insists that revelation…
In his book on the Trinity, Veli-Matti Karkkainen has a concise summary of Pannenberg’s Trinitarian theology. He begins by noting that Pannenberg’s entire program for theology is to establish the “truth of Christian doctrine.” Theology is a public discipline that aims to establish universal truth claims. He protests against the…
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