Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God…
With the surprising discovery of the Nelda Boswell scroll historians have deciphered its contents and concluded that the apostle Paul returned to the region of Galatia shortly after he wrote the letter that we call Galatians. The evidence suggests that a number of local pastors, elders, and deacons, along with…
Second Temple Judaism was a form of covenantal nomism, according to E. P. Sanders’ terminology. This means that Torah-observance was a way of expressing loyalty to the Lord of the covenant who had graciously elected Israel. I think Sanders’ view (taken up in bits and pieces and with some modifications…
We often hear that the key to Christian obedience is thankfulness for what God has done. But the Bible stresses faith and hope much more than gratitude. The Baptist pastor and author John Piper has written, “Nowhere in the Bible is gratitude connected explicitly with obedience as a motivation. We…
One of the questions that is commonly asked about Tom Wright regards his teaching about how Paul uses the term “the righteousness of God.” Since Wright’s interpretation of the term in Paul’s epistles is commonly mentioned in passing but rarely analyzed, it seems like a good idea to explicitly spell…
If God promised a certain land to the seed of Abraham, saying that it would be theirs “forever” (Gen. 13:15), why do Reformed churches teach that the Jews permanently lost their right to the land? What about all these Old Testament “forever” promises and prophesies made to the Jews? How…
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In the course of a review of Vittorio Montemaggi's Reading Dante's Commedia as Theology , Rowan Williams offers these observations on Inferno and Purgatorio : "There is still a tendency among not very attentive readers – not to mention people who have read almost nothing of the work but have…
"God's work in history," writes Mark Searle ( Liturgy Made Simple ), "is to gather into one the scattered children of God, to overcome divisions, to provide a place for the homeless and the lonely, to give support to those whose burdens are heavy, and to create an oasis of…
John Milbank argues in his Beyond Secular Order that " historicism cannot straightforwardly be considered as something specifically modern" (8). In fact, it originates from a Christian insight: "the sense of estranged distance from the past is initially the fruit of the Christian contrast between old and new covenants and…
Last week, I wrote a Firstthings.com column summarizing the argument of Graham Allison's Destined for War , a study of Sino-American relations organized around the concept of the "Thucydides Trap." Allison says that the ancient Greek historian claimed that Athens and Sparta went to war because Sparta was fearful of…
Christine Chaillot has a fascinating summary of the liturgical traditions of the "Ancient Oriental Churches" (Egyptian, Ethiopian, Syrian, Assyrian, Indian) in The Oxford History of Christian Worship . She quotes this Eucharistic hymn from the fifth-century Saint Yazdin (p. 164): "Strengthen, O our Lord, the hands which reach out and…
In ST I, 45, 5, Thomas Aquinas asks whether God alone creates. His sed contra cites Augustine’s de Trinitate (3.8), where Augustine says that angels cannot create anything. If angels cannot, Thomas reasons, neither can any other creature. He presents several arguments in favor of this conclusion. Creation is, Thomas…
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