Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Having spent time in a number of different kinds of churches/denominations over the years, it has been my observation that in every group there are those with a healthy catholic attitude toward other Christians and also those with a proud and condescending attitude toward others who call themselves Christians. If…
The BHrethren might be interested in this post I wrote on my personal blog which disagrees with John Gerstner’s understanding on the Church . Amid all the discussion of eschatology and hypercalvinism and how the visible church may properly be called the body of Christ, I completely overlooked how Gerstner’s…
How does one become a true judge? There are two trees in the Garden. One must first eat of the Tree of Life, which is purely a tree of grace, a gift. This is a tree that one has done nothing to deserve, and one must eat perhaps for a…
I just put up that first essay (#29 in a series) because I’d made some math goofs in the version mailed out, and I thought some other people would be interested. If this kind of study does not interest you, that’s fine. The Kingdom is a big place. Also, as…
. . . and the whole thing gets muddled. The words we traditionally use to translate Hebrew terms in the “sacrificial” system are confusing and often convey the wrong ideas. If we are going to understand Leviticus and the old world system of sacrifices and offerings, the first thing we…
I’ll start things off here. This year I’m preaching through the Gospel according to St. Luke. Over the past ten years I’ve preached through the Gospel according to St. Mark, St. John, and St. Matthew (in that order) in our morning services at Providence. It’s been eye-opening for me; and…
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In Galatians 1, Paul twice says things happen “in him.” God reveals His Son “in me” (1:16). The phrase could mean “through me,” suggesting that Paul is an instrument of God’s unveiling of the Son. It’s just as possible, though, that Paul is himself the locus of that revelation; he…
According to Paul’s summary, the gospel is about Jesus’ self-gift, which plucks us from this present evil age (Galatians 1:4). What is that evil age? Paul’s use of “then/now” shows in the chapter shows what it means for him. The Galatians have heard about his zeal for the ancestral traditions…
Paul uses the noun “gospel” or the verb “evangelize/preach the gospel” twelve times in the first two chapters of Galatians. It is good news for the twelve tribes. While we can’t rest too much on grammatical forms, it is interesting to note the objects of the verb euaggelizo in these…
INTRODUCTION Jesus arrives in Jerusalem like a king (21:5) and immediately goes to the temple. It is His first visit to the temple in Matthew’s gospel, and He is not impressed. He condemns it as a robbers’ den, and then sets up His own ministry of healing in the house…
An English friend who knows whereof he speaks assures me that the statistics that I cited about the Royal Navy last week were off. The Royal Navy has 90 vessels, not 35 as I claimed (following Thomas Madden). Madden’s point still stands: The Royal Navy is only a fraction of…
The outgoing President has taken a lot of shots, some plausible but many preposterous. Madden notes that the claim that Bush has turned himself into a kind of American Augustus is historically naive: “Claiming that President Bush or any other American presidence is a new Pompey or Augustus is simply…
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