Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…
The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…
Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…
The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…
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Paul says that one can only say “Jesus is Lord” by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). He adds later in the same chapter that we are incorporated into the body, the one-and-many body of the visible church, by “one Spirit” (12:13). Surely Paul exaggerates. Anybody can say Jesus is Lord.…
ERH sees faith not as a “religious” issue but as one of the driving forces of history. All revolutions begin in faith, and the faith that drives historical change is a faith that is reckoned as justice: “Faith is a belief in things unseen; it goes against hope, it defies…
Was the American Revolution a Revolution? ERH concludes it was a “half-revolution” rather than a total revolution on the scale of the Russian, French, Puritan, Reformation, and Papal revolutions. Evaluating the revolutionary character of the American Revolution rests partly on the question of what “revolution” meant to the participants. ERH…
To outsiders, the Roman Catholic church appears to have a uniform liturgical tradition, of long standing. Rosenstock-Huessy points out that the uniformity of the Mass is a rather late development. During the 19th century, “the movement of Solesmes united all the churches of the Catholic world by introducing the Roman…
Within two verses, John accuses Diotrephes of refusing to “receive us” and refusing to “receive the brethren” (3 John 9-10). The first refers to an acknowledgement of authority; receiving “us,” the elder and his co-workers, would mean listening and obeying. The second refers to hospitality; receiving the brothers means welcoming…
John commends Gaius not only for receiving traveling brothers but for sending them on their way “in a manner worthy of God” (3 John 6). What does this mean? Stott is certainly right to say that they are to be treated as servants of God. But John’s language is more…
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