Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Imagine driving up to Canada and stopping at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. While you’re sitting at the table, an enthusiastic young man comes over to you and says in an excited voice, "Are you an American?" You reply, "Yes, I am." "Wonderful! I have so little…
1 O Lord Almighty, God of our fathers, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous posterity; 2 You who have made heaven and earth with all their order; 3 who have shackled the sea by Your word ofcommand, who have confined the deep and sealed it with…
Part 1: 1When King Astyages was laid with his fathers, Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom. 2 And Daniel was a companion of the king, and was the most honored of his friends. 3Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day they spent on it twelve bushels…
This debate has been going on for some time. But with few exceptions, almost all explanations of Presbyterian church polity claim that a “church” (meaning a single local congregation) must be ruled by “a plurality of elders” of whom one may happen to teach and work full-time doing so. This…
I hope that those who are advocating reading more of the ancient, "classical" literature of the ancient, "classical" world, are also promoting the Apocrypha. I’m afraid that many Christians don’t realize what great literature much of the Apocrypha is. It is not, of course, inspired by God, and perhaps because…
PRESBYTERIANISM is a term referring to a system of government in the Church. It is commonly contrasted with Congregationalism and Episcopalianism. Presbyter is a Greek word that is translated as “elder” in our English New Testaments. Thus, Presbyterianism is commonly defined as “rule by elders.” This is a misleading definition.…
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It’s not clear whether Vico (1668-1744) had actually read Descartes (1596-1650) directly, or how much he had read. But it is clear enough that he had read and understood the Cartesianism of his time. His response is perhaps most clearly seen in his treatment of ethics. He opposed the application…
Caputo argues that for Kant God fulfills a purely “regulative” function, providing the basis for an aesthetic “as if” regarding the divine regulation of the world. God also has a moral function, giving the rational demands of duty a divine, theological umph. Kant’s philosophy and the Enlightenment in general “put…
Vico objected to the prioritization of natural science and logic over rhetoric in the schools of his day, arguing that “the invention of arguments are by nature prior to the judgment of their validity, so that, in teaching, that invention should be given priority over philosophical criticisms.”
Hamann: “The connection and agreement of concepts is precisely the same in a demonstration as the relation and sympathy of numbers and lines, sounds and colours are in a musical composition or painting.”
As noted in a post earlier his week, Barth sees Kant’s philosophical program as an opening for the biblical theologian to do his own thing on his own basis by his own methods, without paying much of any attention to reason. Milbank wonders if this doesn’t leave a “certain liberal…
Milbank closes a superb article on the “radical pietists” (Hamann and Jacobi) with this paragraph: “Because [the radical pietists] point theology to a radical orthodoxy they also show how theology can outwit nihilism. Not by seeking to reinstate reason, as many opponents of postmodernity would argue. This is absurd, because…
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