Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…
In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…
Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…
In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…
Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…
The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…
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It's tempting, Ivan Illich admits ( Gender ), to think that “gender” is tribal and primitive, and that “social sex” inevitably arises in advanced, complex social and economic settings. He offers the gendered world of the Middle Ages as a counter-example. Tenants and freeholders paid rent to the lord, and…
I n a TLS essay on the Welsh poet David Jones, A.N. Wilson traces Jones’s poetic impulses back to World War I: “The First World War in general, the Battle of the Somme in particular, became Jones’s imaginative habitation for the rest of his life, as a visual artist and…
I n various writings advocating efforts to promote the unity of the church, I haven’t always made clear that unity is not the same as uniformity. This is a brief clarification. It's natural, and unobjectionable, that churches manifest the cultural variations of peoples that constitute them. German churches will sing…
S hould young children receive the Lord's Supper? Should we practice paedo-communion? Before we address the question of paedocommunion, we must specify both what the question is and what sort of question it is. First, what is the question of paedocommunion? It is not in essence a question about the…
I srael gathers at Hebron to make David king (1 Chronicles 11–12). There are the usual king-making actions—anointing, covenant-making, mutual declarations and pledges. It is also a festive occasion, a three-day feast of eating and drinking (12:38–40). As I’ve noted before , four beasts bring seven types of food. It’s…
C hristians often oppose truth and unity. Evangelicals are inclined to leave unity to the mushy mainline, to eclectic ecumenists, and devote themselves to the rock-hard truth, regardless of its divisiveness. The New Testament doesn’t permit this opposition. The rock-hard gospel truth is a truth about unity. The gospel announces…
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