For a week in early October, it looked as if my college football fantasy – or nightmare – might be realized. The three teams I root for all looked as if they might be heading for the NCAA playoff. Yes, I root for three college football teams. I suffer from schizofania. It’s an accident of autobiography. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, son of an Ohio State med school graduate, and I caught Buckeye fever early. I was in the Horseshoe... Read more
On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses, a list of propositions aimed at problems in the Roman Catholic Church, to the door of the university church in Wittenberg, Germany. He wanted to start a theological debate. Instead, he started the Reformation. As Luther’s teaching reverberated through Europe, the aims of his followers expanded. According to historian Scott Hendrix, Protestants aspired to “re-Christianize” Europe. Europe was already Christian, but in the Reformers’ judgment, its Christianity was skin-deep. Europe needed to... Read more
The following is excerpted from my study of Jane Austen’s novels, Miniatures and Morals. Pride and Prejudice begins with two young, handsome, wealthy men moving into the neighborhood, intent, or so Mrs. Bennet believes, on finding pretty wives. New faces in Hertfordshire mean new possibilities of change in the social landscape, and these hopes are realized in the course of the novel, as both Jane and Elizabeth Bennet marry above the status of their immediate family and move into more... Read more
Protestants often focus on the doctrinal issues of the Reformation, but right teaching about justification wasn’t the only issue at stake. The question was, Who is the bearer of Jesus’ kingdom? Or, Which church is the true church? That just raises the further question, What are the marks of the church? Abijah’s pre-battle speech in 2 Chronicles 13 gives us some insight. He is trash-talking Jeroboam and his troops, but he lays out a vision of Israel focused on submission... Read more
For centuries, the history of the Reformation has been written by confessional historians who want to defend their own confessional tradition against the rivals. Lutheran historians make Luther the central character and have demonized the Swiss Reformed, while Reformed historians have flipped to the opposite end. Both Reformed and Lutheran villanize the Catholic church, often for good reason, but that can lead to a simplistic understanding of the conflicts of the sixteenth ands seventeenth centuries. The effect of this historiography... Read more
Nationalism is sometimes presented today as an antidote to the corrosions of modern political order, globalization, secularism. That’s an odd twist, since nationalism was born from the same fires as revolution. James Billington writes (Fire in the Minds of Men, 58) that after the French Revolution, “Nationalism remained the major revolutionary ideal until the final quarter of the nineteenth century. Its mysterious power and continuing mutations make essential a closer look at its origins. The birth of this new ideal... Read more
Nicholas Thompson ( Eucharistic Sacrifice And Patristic Tradition In The Theology Of Martin Bucer 1534-1546 ) stresses the importance of the second great commandment for Martin Bucer’s Eucharistic reforms: “love of neighbour necessarily implied the communion of believers with one another and with Christ in the fellowship of the one body. In Grund und Ursach Bucer noted that Paul had called the sacrament Gemeinschafft ; a name that remained among the Greeks [as Synaxis ] and among the Latins as Collect. The antichrists with their sacrifices had seen... Read more
Jehoiada leads Judah in a three-sided covenant. Judah’s communal life is articulated, ordered. It’s not simply Yahweh-with-a-mass of Israelites. It’s Yahweh with Jehoiada the priest, Joash the king, and the people of Judah. Covenant constitutes a political order. The new covenant posits a structured polity: Jesus the king, ministers, and people. Liturgical leadership isn’t an optional extra of Christian faith, nor merely a practical necessity. Insofar as the new covenant takes historical form as church, the ministry is inherent in... Read more
Seizing power doesn’t make a revolution. When you seize speech, then you’ve got a chance at total revolution. Writing of the French Revolution, James Billington writes (Fire in the Minds of Men, 34-5), ” four-letter outbursts of the youthful demonstrators in the late 196os echoed the political shock tactics of [Jacques-Rene] Hebert, who ‘. . . never began a number of the Pere Duchene without putting in a foutre or bougre. This gross vulgarity signified nothing but signaled . . .... Read more
You could find anything in the cafes of the Palais Royal in the last decades of the eighteenth century: “Distinctions of rank were obliterated, and men were free to exercise sexual as well as political freedom. In the course of a single visit, one might sip such libations of liberation as a new tricolored liquor, savor foreign foods in perfumed botes, see the laterna magica trace the history of the world in the apartment of Philippe-Egalite, visit a quasi-pornographic wax... Read more
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