Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Understanding Shakespeare’s Biblical references is vital for the interpretation of many, if not all, of Shakespeare’s plays. For Othello , it is especially important, not only because the interpretation of the play is contested among various approaches — feminist, homosexual, post-colonial, Marxist, Freudian, new historical, and others — but also…
Mike Allen of Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, scores some points in his review of The End of Protestantism . He lodges the fair complaint that my rhetoric sometimes outruns my evidence. He argues that more stress on the present reality of the church’s unity deepens the tragedy of division; divisions…
I begin with two observations. First, on any millennial view, the Christian account of history is progressive, moving from the garden to the city. It is eschatological not only in that there is an end, but that the end is a glorified beginning, not merely a return to origins. To…
The church is a new form of polity that erupts into the world as much as the Son of God comes into the world. It’s a real-world political alternative to the polities of the ancient world. It resolves many of the political dilemmas of the ancient world, though not simply…
In my last post , I explained how Baptists really have a “one-ordinance-one sacrament” ecclesiology. I said this: “what Baptists really believe, in modern parlance, is that there is one ordinance (baptism which is a sign or symbol only) and one sacrament (the Lord’s Supper in which feeding upon Jesus…
One of the most extensive and penetrating responses to the Yoder-Hauerwas attack on Constantiniansm is found in Oliver O’Donovan’s Desire of Nations , in a chapter entitled “The Obedience of Rulers.” O’Donovan defines the word “Christendom” as “a historical idea,” specifically “the idea of a professedly Christian secular political order,…
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Rational people, people of good will and good sense, will differ about the wisdom of the Marriage Pledge written by Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz and endorsed by Rusty Reno this week. They have already begun to differ. A defense of the Pledge would go something like this: Churches that…
In his remarkable Acquittal by Resurrection , Markus Barth argues that the judgment by which God justifies “cannot be a paradox or a wanton and arbitrary decision.” Barth lays out three conditions that such a judgment must fulfill if it is to be considered righteous: It must have “a solid…
Timothy Larson of Wheaton has written a number of illuminating, witty books. His latest, The Slain God , examines a neglected chapter in the story of faith-and-modernity, the interaction of anthropology and Christian faith during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Larsen’s book is biographically organized, with a chapter each on…
You know how the curtain parts at the beginning of a play, and you see a new scene, with characters and sets and incidents that had remained hidden up til then? Church last week was like that. Except the curtain was made up of all the things I thought were…
1 Kings begins with a brief story about David, aging and cold, unable to stay warm at night. It’s pathetic, and also thematic, because throughout 1-2 Kings, a king’s health symbolizes the health of his kingdom. But the roots of the story go deeper. When God first created Adam, he…
John’s encounter with the strong angel from heaven is described with a chiasm, and that structure helps solve a puzzle in the passage: a. Strong angel descends from heaven and straddles land and sea, 10:1-2. b. He cries and thunder speaks; what the thunder says is sealed, 10:3-4. c. Oath…
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