Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Standing in the narthex at the font, parents joyfully approach with their newborn child. The pastor asks the parents a series of questions that may include their renunciation of the devil and all his works, their faith in God the Father, Son, and Spirit as explained in the Apostles’ Creed,…
And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, with…
Get the Psalm 30 Translation here Psalm 30 is a song for the dedication of "the house." Since it is by David, the house would seem to be his palace in Jerusalem. The psalm has an ABA structure, with the B structure being an exhortation to the saints, and the…
I once asked a ferryboat captain if steering a ferry was any different than driving, say, a big semi truck. He looked at me like I had just asked whether a bowling ball fell when you dropped it. “It’s completely different,” he said. “On the river, you never stay pointing…
The key scene in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing comes just after the first wedding scene when Claudio tosses Hero aside as a "rotten orange." He has been tricked into thinking that Hero is unfaithful, and that is an affront to his honor. He won't put her away quietly. He…
Medieval Christianity is in the news. That’s exciting for me as I have a PhD in medieval theology and I teach Ancient and Medieval Church History at Covenant Seminary. Thus I have a little “skin in the game,” as the saying goes. Earlier this week our President made some comments…
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Most of the Beatitudes in Matthew are stated in third person. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” ” They shall be comforted,” ” they shall inherit the earth,” ” they shall be called the sons of God.” At the end, Jesus changes the…
One of the best discussions of Augustine’s views on time comes from Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music, and Time (ch. 3). Following Ricoeur’s discussion, 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…
John Rist offers some important insights into Augustine’s view of time. He notes, as many commentators do, that Augustine is not aiming to provide a definition of time but to answer the question of how time can be measured. The dilemma is: If the past no longer is, and the…
In a 1957 essay in Man and Time , Gilles Quispel claims that Augustine’s views of time have been extracted from the “great struggle between a cyclical and a historical view of the world, between archaism and Christianity,” and therefore have been misunderstood. Augustine “comes to grips with the Neoplatonists…
Augustine argues in Confessions that time is not reducible to the movement of the celestial bodies. Aristotle agreed; but, as Ricoeur points out, the arguments that Augustine used departed radically from Aristotle. First, if the sun and stars stopped moving, and yet a potter’s wheel continued to move, time would…
Augustine argues in Confessions that time is not reducible to the movement of the celestial bodies. Aristotle agreed; but, as Ricoeur points out, the arguments that Augustine used departed radically from Aristotle. First, if the sun and stars stopped moving, and yet a potter’s wheel continued to move, time would…
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