Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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The first part of a Lenten meditation on John’s Passion narrative by Pastor Jeff Meyers at the Trinity House site.
Some years ago it struck me how much current political opinion and theory depend on appeals to normative events. We can’t do or say X because of the Holocaust, or because of Fascism, or because of the Civil Rights Act. Events close off certain political and moral options. This mode…
In the current issue of First Things , David Bentley Hart expresses his skepticism of “the attempt om recent years by certain self-described Thomists, particularly in America, to import [natural law] tradition into public policy debates.” He has in mind the idea that “compelling moral truths can be deduced from…
Summarizing the work of Peter Brown, James Davison Hunter ( To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World , 55) points to the crucial connection between Christian attitudes toward the poor and the transformation of Roman society: Prior to Christianity, the poor…
Trinity Reformed Church recently had Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio out to Moscow for a series of lectures on music. They were spectacular, and are now available online at Canon Wired .
It’s a truism of Protestant biblical hermeneutics that, whatever else you might be able to do with allegories and typologies, you cannot use them to prove doctrine. “Allegories are fine ornaments, but not of proof,” Luther said in The Table Talk of Martin Luther . Paul never learned this rule.…
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