Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation This essay is a brief argument that the soteriology of John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion regarding union with Christ and the imputation of his righteousness is the same as…
The thoughts in this paper were largely prompted by a study of Walter E. Krebs, “The Word and the Sacraments,” Mercersburg Review (July, 1867), 366-383. The discussion in this paper presupposes my earlier studies of baptism, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future” and “Calvin on Baptism,…
Sometimes our systematic theology creates an illusion of precision. For example, we distinguish the ground and instrument of justification. Justification is grounded in Christ’s work alone, and is instrumentally received by faith alone. That makes good sense and guards us from thinking that faith itself is somehow meritorious. All the…
Whenever we participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we remember Christ and His Work for us. We remember. And in remembering, we imitate God, as His creatures made after His image. God remembers. This is mysterious to us because we usually think of remembering in the context of our…
It is standard in paedobaptist circles to argue for the baptism of infants out of the Old Covenant system. Because there is no explicit command in the New Testament, we are left to the broader principles and patterns of Scripture. In the Old Covenant, we continually find that the children…
Luther popularized the law/gospel hermeneutic. Luther argued that any demands God made upon us fell into the category of “law” and could only condemn. By contrast, anything God gave us was “gospel” and came with no strings attached. Calvin paid lip service to this law/gospel antithesis, even though it was…
Showing page 232 of 309
Showing page 12 of 43
Though not so well-known as the debates over Darwinism, battles over the theological and cosmological import of the second law of thermodynamics played a large role in scientific and religious debates between 1870 and 1910. The debate was carried on partly by long-forgotten figures, but according to Helge Kragh’s 2008…
Rosalind Williams Notes on the Underground is an examination of 19th-century narratives about underground worlds, which she sees as prophetic texts: “Subterranean surroundings, whether real or imaginary, furnish a model of an artificial environment from which nature has been effectively banished. Human beings who live underground must use mechanical devices…
Peter Pomerantsev’s forthcoming Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is a grim, gripping tour through contemporary Russia. It’s a country that transformed overnight from a place “ready to sell anything” to a place where the superrich were able to buy anything they wanted. Pomerantsev says that no place had…
Enraged but exhausted in his fruitless attempts to destroy the woman, the dragon takes a stand on the seashore (Revelation 13:1/12:18). It’s a significant place for him to be,. Going back to Genesis 1:2, we have a creation image. At the beginning, the Spirit of Yahweh hovered over the waters…
Christoph Schwobel ( Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology , 31-3) claims that because God is the “unoriginate originating cause” of all things created, He is “atemporally eternally present to every creature in every point in time of creation.” Yet, creation is the actualization of God’s “eternal will to be in…
Patrick Lee and Robert George offer a sharp critique of various forms of naturalist defense of traditional marriage in their recent Conjugal Union . Defining human nature as a “pattern,” they argue that “it is not obvious that acting unnaturally is always morally wrong.” Even if “unnatural” is taken to…
Showing page 540 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
