Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Misunderstanding “Galatianism” has caused several problems in the Reformed church. Because circumcision is at issue in the Galatian epistle, some have fallen into thinking that ritual per se, rather than anything uniquely Mosaic or Jewish, is the object of Paul’s critique. Likewise, his polemic against “works of the law” is…
Many texts in the NT become more perspicuous if we keep in mind the possibility — and indeed ubiquity — of Gentile God-fearers in the Old Covenant. After the special covenant with Israel is set up, Gentiles are not altogether excluded from the hope of salvation. Israel’s special status in…
I was once trying to get a sermon out of Ephesians 1.12-14 and it seemed obvious that I should look for two parallel statements both ending with the phrase, “to the praise of his glory.” Paul here begins talking about two groups of people (“you” and “we”), and he later…
WHY A DENOMINATION WITH SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN ROOTS SHOULD CAREFULLY CONSIDER THE “NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL” In my denomination, the PCA, we are continually haunted by the sins of our racist Southern past. It has become an annual rite at General Assembly for the issue to be addressed one way or…
Recent debates over whether or not, “justification is central” to Paul’s theology have reminded me of a sermon I once heard by a Presbyterian seminary student. This African American student challenged his audience on the sin of racism and the ways it might manifest itself among us. Like any good…
In Charles Hodge’s 1853 article, “Idea of the Church,” his stated aim is to analyze the idea of the Church proposed in the Apostles’ Creed, in which, “the Church is declared to be “the Communion of the Saints.” He writes: The conception of the Church as the communion of saints…
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At a quick glance, Douglas H. Knight’s The Eschatological Economy (Eerdmans, 2006) looks very good. Some of Knight’s other work has been on John Zizioulas, the Orthodox Trinitarian theologian, and this book includes discussions of Zizioulasian themes like Trinity, personhood, Trinitarian personhood, personhood and being, etc. Yet, Knight’s book is…
A reader, Dan Glover, sends the following reflections concerning my quotations from John Mbiti on the “Pentecostal” experience of getting the Bible in the vernacular: “Your comment from John Mbiti got me thinking of what the Bible in the vernacular of a culture does. It ignited the reformation as well…
In his biography of Bach, Martin Geck quotes a number of notes that Bach penned in the “Calov Bible,” a copy of Luther’s translation that belonged at one time to the theologian Abraham Calov. On Miriam and her singing women, he writes, “First prelude to be performed in two choruses…
In his biography of Bach, Martin Geck quotes a number of notes that Bach penned in the “Calov Bible,” a copy of Luther’s translation that belonged at one time to the theologian Abraham Calov. On Miriam and her singing women, he writes, “First prelude to be performed in two choruses…
Studying African independent churches, David Barrett concluded that the single most important factor in dividing independent churches from missionary-founded churches was the vernacular translation of the Bible. As soon as the Bible was available in the native tongue, readers could check the teaching and practice of the missionary churches against…
Mbiti laments that often “African Christians feel terribly foreign within the doors of the churches to which we belong. Lutheran missionaries have made us more Lutheran than the Germans; Roman Catholic missionaries have made us feel and behave more Roman than the Italians; Anglican missionaries have made us more Anglican…
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