New Resource Page: On Amyraut, Amyraldianism, and Hypothetical Universalism

One of the more important debates that rocked the French Reformed Church in the 17th century was that concerning the doctrine of Moises Amyraut (1596–1664). He was part of a broader movement to revise Reformed theology among the French in a variety . . . Continue reading →

Doubts About Political Theology And The Church As A Lever Of Cultural Influence

© R. Scott Clark

Tish Harrison Warren, a priest in the ACNA (a denomination in the Anglican tradition), writes in Christianity Today, We have an impoverished and inadequate political theology. It took us generations to get here, and this one election, regardless of the results, will . . . Continue reading →

Justification In The Earliest Christian Fathers: 1 Clement

Perhaps the first post-Apostolic use of the New Testament verb “to justify” (δικαιόω) occurs in 1 Clement, written just after 100 AD to the same Corinthian congregation to whom Paul had written half a century earlier. There is no claim of authorship . . . Continue reading →

Office Hours: Aquinas Among The Protestants

Office Hours Video

Thomas Aquinas (c.1224–74) was one of the most important Christian teachers in the period and though he was eclipsed in the centuries after, his work returned to prominence in the 16th–19th centuries particularly among Roman theologians, for whom Thomas became the theologian . . . Continue reading →

Theology And The University In Nineteenth-Century Germany

The history of modern German theology is dominated by two figures, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and G. F. W. Hegel (1770–1831) but there is more to the story. If Schleiermacher and Hegel formed the skeleton, a series of lesser-known figures and institutions formed . . . Continue reading →

Identity Markers: Why Some Axioms Persist

Peter Berger has been an influential and important sociologist of religion for more than 50 years. He is presently Professor Emeritus of Religion, Sociology and Theology and Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. To review a . . . Continue reading →

Inventing Grievances

As Riley-Smith explains, however, the Muslim memory of the Crusades is of very recent vintage. Carole Hillenbrand first uncovered this fact in her groundbreaking book The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. The truth is that medieval Muslims came to realize that the Crusades were . . . Continue reading →

Chiliasm And Soul Sleep

Our study began with Irenaeus’ contention that the belief in an immediate removal of the soul to the presence of God and Christ at death was a stumbling block to orthodox acceptance of chiliasm, and with his counter proposal that the chiliastic . . . Continue reading →

A Very Brief History Of Schooling For Christians

When most Americans think of education and schools we think of buildings, teachers, board meetings, lunch lines, playgrounds, classrooms, and athletic teams. We might be tempted to assume that education has always been done this way but it has not always been . . . Continue reading →

The Road To Unitarianism (2)

This is the second of a two-part series. In part 1 we considered the origins of Unitarianism. The Unitarian faction within the Congregational church continued to grow in the early nineteenth century. The apex of the internal movement was the 1819 “Baltimore . . . Continue reading →

The Road To Unitarianism (1)

Earl Morse Wilbur, the foremost historian of Unitarianism, identified the 1531 publication of Michael Servetus’s De Trinitatis Erroribus, which criticized orthodox Trinitarianism, as the start of the movement that developed into contemporary Unitarianism.1 After infiltrating Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Anglican churches in . . . Continue reading →

Fifteen (Mostly 19th-Century) Myths About The Middle Ages

There are a number of myths about the so-called middle ages: they thought that earth was flat etc. Most of these myths were fabricated in the 19th century. Why? Because that was the apex, in the West, of “Modernity,” the Enlightenment, when . . . Continue reading →