Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference and the Assurance of Grace Recently, there has been some controversy over the presentations of four speakers at the Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference. Accusations have been made including a denial of justification by faith alone and something close enough to “baptismal regeneration” that it…
Today, many in the Reformed world view a meritorious covenant of works as essential to a proper understanding of the gospel. These theologians believe that God set up a program in the Garden by which Adam would merit eternal life and blessing by his obedience. These same theologians usually regard…
After I graduated from college in 1989, I spent a summer in the Atlanta area in Georgia learning that I was not cut out for construction work. Then I met George Grant, one of my favorite authors. He was working for a church in South Florida in charge of their…
One meaning of “righteousness” in the Bible is moral uprightness. Perhaps a more basic meaning would be faithfulness. For example, Psalm 96.13 praises God, saying: He will judge the world in righteousness, And the peoples in faithfulness. In Hebrew poetry two lines often say the same thing using different words.…
I once saw “eschatology” defined as the study of edible French snails. But it really means the doctrine of the last things in Christian theology. In American Evangelical culture it is usually reduced to science fiction stories. But for the Apostle Paul it was actually the key to the Christian…
To understand the view of Nicholas Thomas Wright regarding Christ’s work of redemption, one must begin with the centrality of Adam to the plight of the human race. Anyone who has heard Wright’s lectures on Philippians will not be able to forget his haunting appeal to Genesis 5.3 as a…
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The resurrection was a judicial act, the Father's response to Jesus who “handed himself over to the righteous Judge” (1 Peter 2:23). But what is the verdict? What is the Father saying about Jesus, to Jesus, to us, in the resurrection? Raymund Schwager ( Jesus in the Drama of Salvation…
In his 1956 The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man, Edgar Morin observes that cinema might have been turned to practical uses instead of spectacle. Its fate could have been the fate of the flying machine and the automobile: “All the commentaries in 1896 looked toward the scientific future of the…
In Exodus, Israel moves, as James Jordan has long said, from slavery to Sabbath. That is a beautiful summary of the book, but it must be filled out. The full movement is from slavery to Sinai to Sabbath. Sinai is a way-station, and a necessary one, on the way to…
Jesus was a unifier - of his opponents as much as of his followers. As Raymund Schwager says, Jesus turned “all sections of the Jewish leadership against him,” and this was “a decisive factor in their cooperation” ( Jesus in the Drama of Salvation , 89, quoting R. Pesch). He…
In Raymund Schwager's dramatic analysis of the atonement, Jesus comes proclaiming the kingdom of His good Father, meets rejection and begins to warn of judgment, and then, in a surprising twist, Himself goes to judgment. Jesus' subjection to judgment does not relieve His opponents of judgment. On the contrary, they…
Why did Jesus die on a cross? Thomas asks ( ST III, 46, 4). He gives a variety of answers: Adam sinned at a tree, so Jesus saves at a tree; Jesus suffered in the air to purify the atmosphere; Jesus was elevated in death to show us the way…
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