The Reformation of Images
I’ve been doing some reading on the first commandment and its appendix on images (the second commandment according to a different division of the Decalogue). It is well known that…
I’ve been doing some reading on the first commandment and its appendix on images (the second commandment according to a different division of the Decalogue). It is well known that…
Not many passages in the New Testament speak directly to political order. The first part of the thirteenth chapter of Romans is perhaps the most famous. I would like to focus in this essay on vv. 3-4, which may appear prima facie to be something of an interpretive crux. Are these verses descriptive or prescriptive? That is, are they simply declarative, or are they imperatival, telling us what magistrates ought to do?
For the Christian, the threat of death, in whatever form it comes, does not have the final word. Jesus said it this way: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
