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The Decline of the Magisterial Tradition and the Rise of the Cromwellian Consensus (Pt. 1)
After the conclusion of the English Civil War, the tensions between two Puritan emphases began to become apparent: the ideal of the “godly magistracy,” which assumed general uniformity in religious practice, and the tendency towards a “gathered church,” which had encouraged the gathering of the “godly” in separate assemblies.
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A Theology of Proportion
A Review of God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology, by Steven J. Duby (InterVarsity Press Academic, 2019) by James Clark When considering how to engage in theology, two inclinations tend to be opposed. The first prioritizes “a speculative doctrine of God driven by natural theology or ‘metaphysics’” which inordinately colors…
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The Promise and Peril of Disestablishment: Baptist and Reformed Political Theology in the New Republic
This essay briefly attempts to explore the major formational differences between Baptists and Reformed Christians in the American republic on the question of church and state.
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The Neglected Craft: Prudence in Reformed Political Thought
Aristotle described politics as involving art or craft (techne). It, too, required skill. It, too, could produce excellent, even wondrous edifices: regimes. Once upon a time, the Reformed tradition saw politics in the same manner. Althusius, for example, spoke of “the art of governing.”[1] Joseph Caryl, a Westminster Divine, described rulers as engaging in an…
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Whether One May Flee From a Deadly Plague
The Black Death, which from 1347 to 1350 swept out of China or India to the Crimea and thence into Europe and as far as Iceland, killed one-fourth of the population of Europe.
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The Anatomy of Snowflakes
For a significant portion of the human race, the sensation of self-confidence is but a mental construct. Its internal structure is imaginatively “guessed” and projected on those who evidence its external markers. But like any good alchemy, the recipe remains elusive and secret.
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Feelings, Facts, and Pharisees
“Feelings are not facts,” we hear a lot these days. In a host of intellectual and even pastoral debates, this binary is popular. There are those who care about the real stubborn world of inflexible facts, and those who want to force the world to conform to the shape of their feelings. There are those,…
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A Humble God? Wilcoxen’s Bold Proposal
Matthew Wilcoxen’s Divine Humility: God’s Morally Perfect Being stands out among modern accounts of the doctrine of God, drawing out and expanding upon a neglected dimension within the tradition.
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“Strategy” in the Culture Wars (Part 3 of 3)
Uniting modern persons is no religion or creed or political vision, but rather the world of film and literature. These get to us beneath our discursive reasoning. Whatever creed or critic you follow, you probably like Johnny Cash, The Wire, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
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“Strategy” in the Culture Wars (Part 2 of 3)
One way of reading the story of civilization is to read it as a story of divine pedagogy. This can be overstated at the expense of other truths and metrics of reality, but (as such) it is both a biblical notion (Gal. 3-4) and a thickly treated theme in the history of the Christian church.…
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