Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Rounding Out the Traditional Doctrine of Justification Justification and the Church The traditional Protestant doctrine of justification fails to fully hold together the soteriological (forgiveness of sins) and the ecclesiological (covenant membership). This is part of a larger problem, of course, namely, the dichotomizing of church and salvation. Biblically and…
John Piper’s book, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002) is, from any perspective, a passionate work. Nevertheless, I find I need to disagree with parts of it. The reason I do this is not because John Piper’s book does…
What follows is a handout for a Sunday School class I have taught recently at my church . Presbyterian doctrine teaches what the Bible says about God sovereign control over history and his unconditional choice (election) to bring some people to everlasting glory while allowing others to remain in unbelief…
“Covenantal Nomism” sounds like a description of tiny contract-loving creatures who live underground. But it is actually a recent term used to describe the pattern of religious belief and practice in first-century Palestinian Judaism. The idea is that God graciously establishes a structured relationship based on promises, a “covenant,” with…
What follows deals primarily with two essays, one by Dr. Douglas Kelly and the other by The Rev. Richard Phillips . My reason for writing this essay is that many people are confidently saying things about N. T. Wright that I believe are contrary to fact. I choose Dr. Kelly…
The Bible is often treated as a book of rules with directions for living. To some extent, that is true; but it is neither the whole truth nor the most important truth about the book. Ultimately, the Bible is a story about God and man and their reconciliation in Christ.…
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H.A. Drake’s Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Ancient Society and History) is a remarkable piece of work. One of his opening moves is to show how, despite clear and overt differences, both Burckhardt’s pure-political Constantine and Baynes’s sincere-Christian Constantine share common assumptions about politics and religion. He…
Niebuhr has this nice harmonization of the Matthean and Lukan beatitude to the poor: “Both versions are necessary to catch the full flavor of the beatitude. For the Lukan version alone would make poverty a guarantee of virtue, particularly of the virtue of humility, which it is not. The Matthean…
Niebuhr claims that irony is inherent in the Christian view of history: Christianity’s “interpretation of the nature of evil in human history is consistently ironic. This consistency is achieved on the basis of the belief that the whole drama of human history is under the scrutiny of a divine judge…
Niebuhr ( Irony ) quotes an unnamed European statesman who expresses gratitude for America’s help in resisting tyranny, but fear “that we might become an American ally.” America’s idealism doesn’t reassure him: “The idealism does indeed prevent America from a gross abuse of its power. But it might well accentuate…
Charles Maier’s comparative study Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors reaches the waffly but accurate conclusion that the “United States reveals many, but not all - at least not yet - of the traits that distinguished empires.” Early on, he makes the helpful distinction between “being” and “having” an…
Van Dam ( Roman Revolution of Constantine ) suggests that Eusebius’s Life was simultaneously a political tract celebrating the elevation of a Christian emperor and a theological apology promoting Eusebius’s Christological subordinationism. The afterlife of Eusebius’s treatise, though, put the emperors in their place. Rufinus’s translation/paraphrase of Eusebius’s Church History…
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