Guilt and Guilt-Bearing

Last updated on: September 20, 2016 at 12:00 am by Peter Leithart

Guilt and Guilt-Bearing 2016-09-20T00:00:00+06:00 Peter Leithart

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Brad Littlejohn presents a number of criticisms of my account of penal substitution in Delivered from the Elements of the World. I won’t attempt to address all of them, but focus—at once too briefly and at tedious length—on Brad’s central substantive question, which concerns guilt and Jesus’ guilt-bearing.

First, a point about the motivations behind my treatment of the topic. My main aim was to present an account of penal substitution that could withstand recent and long-standing criticisms, among which are: penal substitution imposes an alien framework on the gospel events; it ignores the resurrection; it violates basic Trinitarian convictions. In a fit of over-acceptance, I attempted to show that penal substitution is defensible, perhaps unavoidable, even on the assumptions and with the tools of critics of penal substitution.

That was behind my claim that penal substitution is a “plot summary.” Sticking close to the Gospel narratives, you confront the fact that Jesus is an innocent man suffering for the sins of those who condemn Him; they condemn Jesus for crimes they themselves have committed. Brad worries that I’m saying it’s “nothing more than” a plot summary, and that “nothing more than” is revealing. It might imply that there we can get to some more comprehensive or foundational account of the atonement by moving out of the Gospel plot into some other framework.

I argue the contrary. As the climactic act of Israel’s tumultuous history with God, the Gospel narratives provide the fundamental atonement theory, of which references in the epistles are short-hand summaries. The atonement was an historical event and had historical causes. Our most basic way to theorize about it is to do what the Evangelists did: Tell, and comment upon, the story. Penal substitution is not merely a plot point; the plot is the point. (That doesn’t mean, of course, that the only actors are human actors. As the Gospels make clear, the central human actor is the incarnate Son, and His Father and Spirit are fully engaged. “Historical” doesn’t mean “immanent.”)

The discussion of guilt and guilt-bearing was part of my effort to address Trinitarian questions and objections: Did the Father treat Jesus as guilty? How can He, when the Son is not guilty? To put it sharply: Whose side is the Father on—Jesus’, or Pilate’s and the Jews’? Did the Father take the side of Jesus’ accusers?

After quoting a footnote from my book, Brad summarizes my position: “Jesus bears the consequence, the legal penalty of Israel’s guilt, but without bearing the legal guilt.” This, he says, is inadequate. It leaves human beings still in their sins: “if Jesus paid the legal penalty that Israel deserved, and yet without bearing the legal guilt, then it may have been noble, it may have been inspiring, but it would not change the fact that Israel, and all mankind, stood condemned.” Citing Robert Dabney, he distinguishes between “sinfulness” and guilt, arguing that while the Father doesn’t treat Jesus as personally guilty, He does treat Him as “federally and forensically guilty.”

When Brad refers to “the tradition,” I assume he means the Reformed tradition, since there has been a fair bit of dispute about guilt and the guilt-bearing of Jesus in the wider Christian tradition. Medieval theologians commonly distinguished between reatus culpae and reatus poenae. In the medieval system, Christ’s work dealt with the first but not the second, so that “persons could have liability to guilt [reatus culpae] removed” but “still have the liability to punishment that is not remitted by Christ’s work and might . . . lead them to be punished for their sin in purgatory” (Oliver Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 100). Crisp (100–1) observes that the Reformed orthodox replaced this medieval distinction with one between reatus potentialis, “the intrinsic desert of punishment that is inseparable from sin and is non-transferable,” and the reatus actualis, “that aspect of guilt that is transferable and can be remitted by divine mercy.” Note: For the Reformed orthodox, there is “guilt” that can be transferred and removed, and other guilt that cannot be.

This is the distinction Dabney has in mind in the passage Brad quotes, though Dabney uses “sinfulness” instead of “potential guilt.” Dabney argues that “in the penal substitution of Christ, it is the actual guilt of sinners . . . and nothing else, which is transferred from them to him” (emphasis added). But he defines “actual guilt” as “obligatio ad peonam ex peccato, the debt of penalty to law arising out of transgression.” That is, actual guilt is precisely the liability to suffer the consequence and penalty of sin. That is the only sort of guilt that, according to Dabney, can be transferred to another. Dabney, then, doesn’t support Brad’s claim that both “legal guilt” as well as liability to punishment are imputed to Jesus. There may be Reformed theologians who agree with Brad (if I’ve understood what he means by “legal guilt”), but Dabney isn’t one of them.

Charles Hodge agrees with Dabney in saying that only actual guilt is imputed to and borne by Jesus: “To impute sin, in Scriptural and theological language, is to impute the guilt of sin. And by guilt is meant not criminality or moral ill-desert, or demerit, much less moral pollution, but the judicial obligation to satisfy justice. Hence the evil consequent on the imputation is not an arbitrary infliction; not merely a misfortune or calamity; not a chastisement in the proper sense of that word, but a punishment, i.e., an evil inflicted in execution of the penalty of law and for the satisfaction of justice” (Systematic Theology, 2.194–5). Bavinck defines guilt in a similar fashion: “Guilt is an obligation incurred through a violation of the law to satisfy the law by suffering a proportionate penalty. It binds the sinner, immediately after the violation of the law, to its demand for satisfaction and punishment. . . . Guilt is an ‘obligation for the purpose of enduring a fair punishment,’ ‘the subjection of a sinner to a penalty’” (Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3; emphasis added).

Yet there are (at least) two complications. First is the question of whether guilt is intrinsic to a morally wrong act or a sentence imposed by a judge. Bavinck argues for the first: “Inasmuch as we are the active cause of the violation, we are under indictment . . . ; the act is imputed to us. We must account for it and are obligated to satisfy the law; we are liable to punishment. . . . At the very moment when they position themselves outside the law (i.e., outside love), it strikes them with its curse and binds them to its punishment.”

Dabney, by contrast, argues that actual guilt—liability to punishment—is always assigned by a sovereign or judge: “It is the penal enactment of the lawgiver which ascertains and fixes this guilt. Hence, under a lawgiver who was less than omniscient and all perfect, there might be sin, evil attribute and potential guilt, while yet the actual guilt was absent, because the penal statute defining it did not exist. It thus appears that while evilness or sinfulness is an attribute, actual guilt (reatus) is not an attribute but a relation. It is a personal relation between a sinning agent and the sovereign will which legislates the penal statute. Now, when the Scriptures and theology speak of penal imputation or substitution, it is this relation only which is transferred or counted over from the sinning person to his substitute. We do not dream of a similar transfer of personal acts, or of the personal attributes expressed in such acts.”

On Dabney’s account, guilt is always imputed or reckoned, whether to the person who actually committed the wrong or to another who can pay the penalty that guilt demands. The guilt that can be transferred is guilt determined and assigned by a judge. (I have suggested elsewhere that Leviticus supports something like Dabney’s view, and I think this position deals more elegantly with the issue of transferability than the alternative.)

The second complication is more troublesome: If guilt is intrinsic to a wrong act, and yet if that guilt-as-attribute is not transferrable, we are left in the very position that Brad worries about: Still guilty even after Jesus died for me.

This is not a hypothetical danger. It is where Hodge explicitly leaves us: “The word guilt, as has been repeatedly remarked, expresses the relation which sin bears to justice, or, as the older theologians said, to the penalty of the law. This relation, however, is twofold. First, that which is expressed by the words criminality and ill-desert, or demerit. This is inseparable from sin. It can belong to no one who is not personally a sinner, and it permanently attaches to all who have sinned. It is not removed by justification, much less by pardon. It cannot be transferred from one person to the other. But secondly, guilt means the obligation to satisfy justice. This may be removed by the satisfaction of justice personally or vicariously. It may be transferred from one person to another, or assumed by one person for another. When a man steals or commits any other offence to which a specific penalty is attached by the law of the land, if he submit to the penalty, his guilt in this latter sense is removed. It is not only proper that he should remain without further molestation by the state for that offence, but justice demands his exemption from any further punishment” (2.476).

Note: Guilt in the first sense is “not removed by justification, much less by pardon.” What can be removed is the obligation to pay a penalty or debt. In Hodge’s view, then, we are not only justified people who continue to sin (simul iustus et peccator); we are justified people who are still guilty of our sin (though no longer liable to punishment). The “potential guilt” we still bear even after we are delivered from actual guilt is, perhaps, simply a fact: We have sinned and forgiveness doesn’t undo the past. But Hodge describes potential guilt as a subset of guilt, which is “the relation which sin bears to justice . . . to the penalty of the law.” It is a legal status and not merely a fact. For Hodge, we appear to be subjects of a double verdict—both guilty and justified. That formula leaves existential and pastoral problems in its wake, the inverse of the existential and pastoral problems left in the wake of the medieval system. The medievals removed guilt but retained punishment; Hodge leaves us free from punishment but still guilty.

One way to handle this is to say what Brad suggests: Both potential and actual guilt are imputed to Jesus. But this runs against the Reformed position outlined here, which insists that only actual guilt is imputed and borne (though, as noted, Brad may be able to cite Reformed theologians who agree with him). And it runs up against objections to the transferability of potential guilt from both advocates and opponents of penal substitution.

My proposal is this: Guilt is liability to punishment; guilt in this sense is transferable, since someone else can pay my debt to the law. When Jesus dies, He bears my liability to punishment, and that is the only guilt there is. He can do that because He is not merely a guy paying my debt, but the true Israel and Last Adam, united to those whose guilt He bears. The past is not undone; I remain the person who did this and that evil act, and I continue to sin. But that factual sin isn’t guilt. Guilt has to be assigned by a judge, and the Judge doesn’t find me guilty. Jesus has borne all the guilt because guilt simply is my liability to satisfy the penalty imposed by the court (my exclusion from Eden and the tree of life, and all that entails). Trusting in Jesus, I am not justified and guilty, but simply justified. This also departs from the Reformed tradition (as summarized), but it seems to resolve the pastoral and existential tensions that Hodge’s position creates.

In my book, the discussion of guilt-bearing is part of an argument about the Trinitarian setting of penal substitution. The Father does not regard the Son as if in fact He had committed our sins. How could the Father pretend that the Son had murdered Abel, or committed adultery with Bathsheba? The Son didn’t do those things, and God is true, though every man is a liar. That would a legal fiction to end all legal fictions, and opponents and proponents of penal substitution rightly reject any such suggestion.

What the Father does is to subject the Son—who willingly subjects Himself—to the punishment due to sinners, the curse of God-forsakenness, exclusion from the garden and the tree. The Son does His Father’s will, proves Himself Son precisely in His willing entry into our Godforsakenness, demonstrates His Sonship – and hence the Father’s Fatherhood – precisely in the moment when He cries the cry of dereliction. The Son bears the burden of our sin for the sake of the joy set before Him. The Father hands the Son over to His accusers and murderers, the Son bears their sin, and the Father overturns their accusations and verdicts by raising the Son from the dead. Peter’s Pentecost sermon states it precisely: “delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again” (Acts 2:23–4).

Even when the Son enters into our Godforsakenness and submits to wrath, the Father doesn’t take the side of Jesus’ enemies; the Father does not turn accuser; God doesn’t become Satan. If defenders of penal substitution don’t think this needs to be said, they haven’t been giving their critics a fair hearing.

atonement

Penal substitution

Previous Post

September 19, 2016

Beyond Language?

Next Post

September 21, 2016 Communio Beyond Ecclesiology

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1-2 Samuel 1968 Abelard Abortion Abraham Acedia AD 70 Adam Smith Addiction Advent Advertising Aeneid Aesthetics Africa African Christianity African Church African religion Age Aging Agriculture Airline industry Alabama Alasdair MacIntyre Albania Alcohol Allegory Alms Alternative Medicine Ambrose America American Christianity American culture American economy American Evangelicals American Foreign Policy American history American Literature American Military American Politics American Religion American Revolution Anagogy Analytic Philosophy Anamnesis Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient history Ancient Near East Ancient Religion Angels Anglican Church Anglicanism Animism Anointing of the Sick Anselm Anthropology Anthropomorphism anti-Catholicism Antiquities Antonio Lopez apocalypse Apocalyptic Apocalyptic language Apostles Creed Aquinas Archeology Architecture Arianism Aristotle Ark of the Covenant Art Art History Ascension Aseity Assurance Athanasius Atheism Athens atonement Attention Attributes Augustine Austin Farrer Authority autonomy Avant-garde Awe Bach Ballooning Balzac Banking Bankruptcy Baptism Baptists Baseball Basketball Bavinck Beatitudes Beauty Behavioral Economics Being Benedict XVI Benjamin Benjamin Franklin Beowulf Berkeley Bernie Sanders Bertrand Russell Bestiary Bible Bible - criticism Bible - NT Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians Bible - NT - 1 John Bible - NT - 1 Peter Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians Bible - NT - 2 Peter Bible - NT - Acts Bible - NT - Colossians Bible - NT - Ephesians Bible - NT - Galatians Bible - NT - Gospels Bible - NT - Hebrews Bible - NT - James Bible - NT - John Bible - NT - Jude Bible - NT - Luke Bible - NT - Mark Bible - NT - Matthew Bible - NT - Paul Bible - NT - Philippians Bible - NT - Revelation Bible - NT - Romans Bible - NT - Thessalonians Bible - NT - Timothy Bible - OT Bible - OT - Amos Bible - OT - Chronicles Bible - OT - Daniel Bible - OT - Deuteronomy Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Bible - OT - Esther Bible - OT - Exodus Bible - OT - Ezekiel Bible - OT - Ezra-Nehemiah Bible - OT - Genesis Bible - OT - Habakkuk Bible - OT - Hosea Bible - OT - Isaiah Bible - OT - Jeremiah Bible - OT - Job Bible - OT - Joel Bible - OT - Jonah Bible - OT - Joshua Bible - OT - Judges Bible - OT - Kings Bible - OT - Lamentations Bible - OT - Leviticus Bible - OT - Malachi BIble - OT - Micah Bible - OT - Nehemiah Bible - OT - Numbers Bible - OT - Pentateuch Bible - OT - Proverbs Bible - OT - Psalms Bible - OT - Ruth Bible - OT - Samuel Bible - OT - Song of Songs Bible - OT - Torah Bible - OT - Zechariah Bible - OT - Zephaniah Biblical Law Biblicism Billy Graham biography Biology Biololgy Biotechnology Blasphemy Blindness Blog news Blogging Blogroll Bloomsbury Group Bob Dylan Body Body symbolism Boethius Boko Haram Bonhoeffer Book of Common Prayer Books Botany Boundary Brexit Britain British History British Politics Bruce Springsteen Buddhism Bureaucracy Burial Business C. S. Lewis C. S. Peirce Calendars Caliphate Calvin calvinism Camille Paglia Canon Capitalism Cappadocians Carl Schmitt Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Catholicity Causation cemeteries Cervantes Charism Charismata Charity Charles Dickens Charles Hodge Charles Simeon Charles Taylor Charles Williams Chaucer Chermistry Chess Chesterton Chiasm children China Chinese Exclusion Act Chivalry Chopin Chretien de Troyes Christendom Christian Democracy Christian reconstruction Christianity in Britain Christianization Christmas Christology Chronology Church church and state Church architecture Church Calendar Church history Church of England Church Year Cicero Circumcision Cities City of God Civil Religion Civil Society Civil War Civility Classical Theism Classics Climate Change Clothing Coleridge Colloquy of Marburg Colonialism Color Comedy Comenius Commodity Communio Communism Community Comparative religions Computer Science Confederacy Confessionalization Conflict Congregations consciousness Consecration Conservatism Constantine Constitution consumerism Contra Faustum Conversion Coriolanus Cormac McCarthy Cosmology Cosmopolitanism Council of Trent Counter-culture Counter-insurgency Courage Courtly love Covenants Crafts Craftsmanship Cranach Creation Creativity Creator-creature Credit Crime Crime and Punishment Crisis Critical scholarship Criticism Cross Cubism Cultural theory Culture Culture War Dance Daniel Dennett Dante Darwin Dave Eggers David David Foster Wallace David Hume David Jones Deadly sins Death Debt Dechristianization Decolonization Deconstruction Defoe Deja vu Democracy Denis de Rougemont Denominationalism Derrida Descartes Developmental psychology Devils Diocletian Discipleship Disenchantment Disgust Diversion Diversity Divine energies Divine Impassibility Divine Simplicity Divine Warrior Doctrine dogma Dominion Donald Trump Dostoevsky Douglas Campbell Douglas Farrow Dreams Dualism Durkheim Dystopia E.M. Forster Early Christianity Early Modern Europe Easter Eastern Europe Eastern Orthodoxy Ecclesiology Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Eden Edgar Allan Poe Edmund Spenser Education Egypt Election Elites Emergence Emma Emotion Empire England English History English Reformation Enlightenment Entertainment Entrepreneur environmentalism Envy Epic Epiphany Episcopals Epistemology Epistles Equality Erasmus Ernst Kantorowicz Eros Eschatology Eternity Ethics Eucharist Europe Evangelicalism Evangelicals and Catholics Together Events Evil Evolution Exile Face Fairie Queene Fairy Tales Faith family Family and Marriage Fantasy Farming Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Fear Femininity Feminism Fertility Fetishization Feud Feudalism Feuerbach Fiction Figs Film Finance Finland Fire Flag Flags Flannery O'Connor Flood myths Folly Food football Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreknowledge Forgiveness Foucault Fracking France Francois Mauriac Franz Rosenzweig free will Freedom Freedom of God French Revolution Freud Funerals Future G. K. Chesterton Gambling Gaming Gay Marriage Gender gender identity Genealogy Geography George Berkeley George Eliot George Herbert; Poetry George Romanes Gerald Manley Hopkins Germany Gethsemane Gift Gifts Giorgio Agamben Global Christianity Global economics Globalism Globalization Glorious Revolution Gnosticism God's sovereignty Gods Goethe Golf Good Friday Gospel Gospels Gothic Gothic architecture Grace Grammar Gramsci Gratitude Greek Literature Greek Philosophy Greek Religion Greek Science Gregory of Nyssa Guillermo del Toro H. Richard Niebuhr Haiku hair Hamann Hamlet Handicap Handles Hands Hans Urs von Balthasar Happiness Harold Bloom Harper Lee Harvest healing Heaven Heavenly treasure Heavenly treasure Hebrew Bible Hebrew language Hegel Heidegger Hell Hellenism; Judaism; Revelation Henri de Lubac heresy Herman Dooyeweerd Hermeneutics Herod Heroic Heroism Hesiod Hidegard of Bingen Hierarchy Hieronymus Bosch Historicism Historiography History History - Early Modern History - Middle Ages Hoaxes Hobbes Holiness Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Home Homeless Homer Homosexuality Honor hope Horror Hospitality Housing Hugh of St. Victor Human Rights Humanism Humor hylomorphism Hymns Hypocrisy. Iago Iconoclasm Identity Ideology Idleness Idolatry Iliad Images Imagination Immigrant churches Immigrant Religion Immigration Imperialism Improvization Imputation Incarnation Incest India Individualism Indonesia Inequality Inerrancy Infant Baptism Infant mortality Infanticide Ingratitude Innovation Inspiration Institutions Insult Intellectual History Intellectuals Intelligent Design International Politics Internet Intimacy IQ Iran Iran-Iraq War Iraq Ireland Irony Islam Islamic State Islamism Ismail Kadare Israel Ivan Illich J. Gresham Machen J.N. Figgis Jacob Jacques Lacan James Bond James Jordan James Joyce James KA Smith James Wood Jane Austen Jane Jacobs Jealousy Jed Perl Jeff Koons Jeroboam Jesus Jewish War 66-70 AD Jihad Johann Georg Hamann Johannine Epistles John Ashbery John Behr John Bunyan John Calvin John Donne John Frame John Howard Yoder John Knox John Milbank John Milton John Owen John Rawls John Ruskin John Stuart Mill John the Baptist John Webster John Wesley John Williamson Nevin Jonathan Edwards Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Conrad Joseph Ratzinger Journalism Joy Judaism Judaize Judgment Judith Butler Jurgen Moltmann Justice Justification Kalevala Kant Karl Barth Karl Marx Karl Polanyi Karl Rahner Kazakhstan Kazuo Ishiguro Kenneth Lonergan Kierkegaard King Lear Kingdom of God Kitsch Knighthood Knowledge Korea Labor movement Lactantius Lamech Lament Landscape Language Latin America Laughter Law Law and Punishment Leftism Lent Les Murray Levi-Strauss Levites Leviticus Liber Mundi Liberal arts Liberal Theology Liberalism Light Lighthouse Linguistics LIstening Literacy Literary structure Literature Liturgics Liturgy Locke Logic Love Luther Lutheran Lutheranism Lying Lytton Strachey Macbeth Machiavelli Machines Madness Mainline Manhattan Manicheanism Manners Manufacturing Manuscripts Mao Zedong Maps Marcion Marilynne Robinson Marketing Marriage Martha Nussbaum Martin Bucer Martin Chemnitz Martyrdom Marx Marxism Mary Mary Douglas masculinity Mass Materialism Mathematics Maundy Thursday Max Weber Media Mediation Medication Medicine Medieval Church Medieval exegesis Medieval Literature Medieval theology Medieval Thought Medievalism Memory Merchant of Venice Mesopotamian Religion Messianic Metaphor Metaphysics Methodist Mexican-American War Michel de Montaigne Michel Faber Middle Ages Middle East Midwifery Mikhail Bulgakov Military Millennium Mind Miracles Miscellaneous Mission missionaries Mixed constitution Modern self modernism Modernity monasticism Monotheism Monroe Doctrine Monsters Montaigne's Essays Moral philosophy Mormonism Moses Mother Teresa Motherhood Motive Mount of Olives Movies Multiculturalism Murder Music Musicals Mutability Mutability Mystery Mysticism myth N. T. Wright Narrative Nation-State Nationalism Natural Law Natural-Supernatural Nature Nature and culture Nature and Grace Nazi Nazirite Necrophilia Nero Nestorianism Neuroscience Nevin Lectures New Atheism New Testament New York City Newbigin News NGOs Nibelungenlied Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Lyra Nietzsche Nigeria Nihilism Nobel Prize Nobility Nominalism Norbert Elias Norman MacCaig nostalgia Novels Numerology Obama Objectivity and subjectivity Occasionalism Odysseus Oil Old Testament Oliver O'Donovan Ontology Origen original sin Orthodoxy Othello Owen Barfield Pacifism Pactum salutis Paedocommunion Paganism Pain Painting Paleoconservatism Palm Sunday Pannenberg Parenting Pascal Passions Passivity Pastoral Care Pastoral theology Patrick Modiano Patristics Patronage Paul Peace of God Peace of Westphalia Penal substitution Pentecost Pentecostalism Perichoresis Pericles Persecution Person Peter Peter Enns Petrarch Philip K. Dick Philip Melanchthon Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of History Philosophy of language Philosophy of science Phone booth Photography Physics Pictures Pierre Bourdieu Place Planned Parenthood Plants plato Play Plot Plotinus Pluralism Pneumatology Poetics poetry Poetry & Stories Poland police Political Philosophy Political theology Political Theory Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Popular Culture Populism Pornography Porphyry Post-Colonial Theory Post-Structuralism Postmodernism Postmodernity Potential Poverty Power Practice Pragmatism Prayer Preaching Predestination Prediction Prehistory Premillennialism Presbyterian Priesthood Prince Charles Prison Reform privacy Private Prodigal Son Progress Progressivism Property Prophecy Prophet Propitiation Prosperity gospel Prostitution Protectionism Protestantism Providence Prudentius psalms Pseudo-Dionysus Psychological Warfare Psychology Public intellectual Public Life Public Philosophy Public Theology Publishing Punk Rock Pure nature Puritanism Purity Pushkin Putin Pythagoreanism R.J. Rushdoony Race Racism Radical Orthodoxy Rape Rationality Reactionary reading Realism Reason Red State Blue State Reformation Reformational Catholicism Reformational Philosophy Reformed theology refugees reinhold niebuhr Relationality Relativism Relics Religion Religion and science Religions Religious Freedom Religious Liberty Religious Right Renaissance Rene Girard Republican Party Resurrection Resurrection. Revelation Revelations Revenge Revivalism Revolution rhetoric Richard Flannagan Richard II Richard III Richard Wagner Richard Wilbur Righteousness Ritual Robert Frost Robert Herrick Robert Jenson Robert Mugabe Robert Spaemann Robinson Crusoe Rock n' Roll Rod Dreher Rodin Roman Catholicism Roman Empire Roman Religion Romance Romanticism Rome Rootedness Rosenstock-Huessy Rousseau Rowan Williams Rural America Russia Russian literature Russian Orthodoxy Rusty Reno Rwanda S. Y. Agnon Sabbath Sacrament Sacramental theology Sacraments Sacred Sacred Space Sacrifice saints Salt Sam Harris Same-sex marriage Sanctuary Satan Satire Saudi Arabia Scapegoat Scarcity Schism Schleiermacher Scholarship Science Science and Theology Science Fiction Scopes trial Scotland Scott Adams Scott Cairns Scottish Reformation Scotus Scripture and tradition sculpture Sea Second temple Secularism Secularization Self-Help Self-trust Semiotics Semper reformanda separation of church and state Sermon on the Mount Sex Sex Trafficking Sexual abuse Sexual Politics Sexual Revolution Sexuality Shakespeare Shame Culture Shema Sherlock Shopping Silence Simone Weil Simplicity Simpsons Sin Sincerity Sixties Skepticism Slavery Slavoj Zizek Sleep Sloth Social capital Social change Social Imaginary Social Science Socialism Socialization Sociology Sociology of Knowledge Sociology of Religion Sola scriptura Sonnets Sophocles Soteriology Soviet Union Space Spain Speculation Spinoza Spirit Sport Sports Star Trek State State-formation Stephen Masty Steven Bannon Strangers Structuralism structure Subject-object Substitution Suburbs Suffering Suicide Super-Rich Superheroes Supersessionism Supplication Supreme Court Surveillance Symbol Synagogue Taberancle Tabernacle Tax Taxes Tears Technology Teens Teleology Television Temple Ten Commandments Terence Terrence Malick Terrorism Thanksgiving The South The West Theodore Roosevelt Theogony Theological Education Theological Language Theology Theology - Anthropology Theology - Christology Theology - Covenant Theology - Creation Theology - Ecclesiology Theology - Eschatology Theology - Liturgical Theology - Pneumatology Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity Theology proper Theopolis Theopolis Institute Theosis Theresa May Thomas A. Clark Thomas Aquinas Thomas Carlyle Thomas Mann Threshing Thucydides Time Tocqueville Tolerance Toleration Tolstoy Tom Wolfe Tools Torah Torture Toscanini Totalitarianism Trade Tradition Tragedy Transhumanism Translation Transubstantiation Travel Trees Trinitarianism Trinity Trinity House Tristan Troilus and Creysede Trump Trump Truth Turkey Twelfth Night Two Kingdoms Typology Ukraine Ulysses Uncanny Uncategorized Uniform Union with Christ United States Unity University Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Value Vatican II Vengeance Vico Victorian Age Victorian Literature Vienna Violence Virgil Virgin Birth Virginia Woolf Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Solovyev Vladimir Solovyov W.H. Auden Walls Walt Disney Walt Whitman Walter Benjamin Walter Lippmann War Wars of Religion Washington DC Wealth Weddings Will William Carlos Williams William Gilpin William Golding Wine Wisdom wonder Word of God Wordsworth Work Works World Council of Churches World History World War I World War II Worldview Worship Wrath Writing Youth Youth Ministry Yuja Wang Yves Congar Zimbabwe Zwingli Zygmunt Bauman

Select a Month January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I was thrown into a den of these beasts for praying three times daily, but they did not harm me. What creatures were they?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Bears Serpents Wolves Lions