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Stephen N. Bretsen argues that the corporation is the result of several elements, both ancient and modern, that were combined by law and market forces in the mid-19th century. The creation of the corporation has led to various theories of the corporation, some viewing the corporation as a private entity solely serving the interests of…

Abraham Kuyper ’s approach to public engagement (his public theology) emphasizes both a “common” element as well as distinctive Christian identity. In this essay Vincent Bacote considers the contrasting approaches to public theology of Max Stackhouse and Ronald Thiemann and then offers a summary of Kuyper ’s public theology. The essay discusses that Kuyper’s work…

In 1958, responding to a proposed screenplay of The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote: “The canons of narrative art in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core…

Many confessional colleges and universities encourage diversity among their students and faculty. Yet while affirming diversity, there are sociological hurdles to overcome which rarely are acknowledged or confronted. Within the field of Biblical Studies, Kathryn J. Smith points out that these hurdles include the tendency to limit pedagogical offerings to those methods developed out of…

John Locke was arguably one of the most influential thinkers on American colonial political thought, but does his reach extend beyond the political realm? Geoffrey C. Bowden argues that Elisha Williams, a rector at Yale in the 1740s, appropriates Locke’s famous doctrine of property to reconceive the nature of religion as a form of personal…

The Christian affirmation of human personhood is based on a philosophical and theological understanding of human beings made in the image and likeness of a Creator-God. Yet, as Dennis M. Sullivan points out, not all participants in ethics discussions share these preconceptions, leading to contentious debates over human value at both the beginning and end…

The idea that persons are or contain a nonphysical soul that is capable of existing after the destruction of the human body is customarily called “dualism.” Over the course of two millennia, the Christian tradition has been solidly in the dualist camp. Most Christians have affirmed the existence of the soul, its survival of death…

To what extent can popular culture be understood as a collection of religions? Using a biblically informed appropriation of Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative as a threefold mimesis as his conceptual grid, Theodore A. Turnau explores how popular cultural texts can function as alternative religions. He focuses on two case studies: a group of romance…