Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Keeping the Law Paul states just as emphatically as James that the doers of the law will be justified (Rom. 2:13; James 2:14ff). But who are these doers of the law? Is Paul speaking hypothetically of a class of sinless people who do not really exist? Or does he have…
I have entitled this super-condensed piece to capture interest, but the fact is it sets forth what I have believed and taught long before I had ever heard of the so-called “new perspective.” For example, one can look at my paper on Ephesians 2.15 , written before I had ever…
N. T. Wright and other “New Perspective on Paul” (NPP) theologians have been criticized and condemned for speaking of justification in various “tenses.” In fact, Wright typically begins discussions of justification with future justification and works his way back to the present. But this is hardly a novelty. While the…
A doctrine of “faith alone” must be explicated and lived out in the light of the larger story of faithfulness, a story that reaches its climax in Jesus, the faithful Messiah. Indeed, the idea of “faith alone,” and even Paul’s use of the OT in service of that idea, makes…
In every city in the United States there are at least a couple of Christian radio stations which broadcast preaching around the clock, seven days a week. Many areas have a Christian television station or two which broadcast worship services several hours a day. Almost any bookstore will have a…
The queston has been discussed: which is prior, faith or repentance? It is an unnecessary question and the insistence that one is prior to the other is futile. There is no priority. The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith and the repentance that is unto life is…
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Daniel Barber ( Modern Theology ) notes that “particularity cannot be reduced to universality. Therefore we have a philosophical reason for approaching Jesus through particularity: sufficient reason, when conceived as universality, is insufficient; causal frameworks cannot negotiate sufficiently with elements of chance and contingency; ‘universality’ cannot be thought of as…
Andrew Bacevich ( The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War ) writes, “Americans in our time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the…
Howe, again, points out that the most obvious “imperial” project in US history is the one we take most for granted, the conquest of the American continent: “it is the internal expansion of the continental USA, across the intervening hundred years, which evokes the most direct parallels with empire-building elsewhere.…
Stephen Howe ( Empire: A Very Short Introduction ) admits that nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian empire “scorned it as the ‘prison-house of nations,” and that to the intellectuals of Vienna, the empire was “a senile absurdity.” Still, “the very existence of those nationalist, cultural, and intellectual movements, able to express…
Gerald Schlabach notes that critiques of Constantinianism pose temptations of various sorts, just as Constantinianism itself does. Insofar as such critiques posit a “fall” for the church, “they tend to be dysfunctional - not just for ecumenical debate, but also for ethical discernment within those churches that historically have defined…
Travis Kroeker ( Journal of Religious Ethics , 2005) argues that Yoder is closer to Augustine than his dismissal of Augustine as a “Constantinianism” implies: “Augustine’s theological corpus is nothing if not exegetical and historical, though, of course, it is also true that Augustine freely appropriates the ‘gold and silver…
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