Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
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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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