Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…
“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…
Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…
Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…
In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…
I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…
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In his sociological history of Christian worship, Martin Stringer examines the process of “Christianization” in the early church as a process of Christian colonization of space. Among other things, he notes that “Christian architecture differed in a number of significant ways from the religious architecture of pagan religions. Most pagan…
In his social history of Christian liturgy, Lutheran liturgist Frank Senn describes the invention of the pax board in England during the 13th century: “This popular practice was welcomed by the clergy and disseminated throughout Christendom by the Franciscans. The pax board was a cross or painted picture of Christ,…
INTRODUCTION Raising children is a way of throwing out a line to the future. It is inherently an act of faith, an effort to outlive ourselves. That’s true of all parenting. But Christian parents need to exercise the full range of theological virtues: faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13).…
In 1536, nearly twenty years after Luther posted the 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, Pope Paul III announced a plan to call a general council to deal with the issues raised by Luther and other Reformers. Despite being excommunicated by the Catholic church a decade earlier, Luther…
“When we were boys,” an editor lamented, “boys had to do a little work in school. They were not coaxed; they were hammered. Spelling, writing, and arithmetic were not electives, and you had to learn. In these more fortunate times, elementary education has become in many places a vaudeville show.…
According to Verene, Vico’s emphasis on child psychology makes him “the authentic precursor of Rousseau” and also a forerunner of Romanticism: “Misleading as may be the view that Vico was an outright pre-Romanticist, there is a whole aspect of the German Romantic movement of which he seems to have been…
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