Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Book Review The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation & Evangelism by Norman Shepherd The Call of Grace is an excellent manual to put in the hands of laymen to teach them how to rest in God’s grace while taking seriously the prize of the upward call of…
My Role as a Parent in My Children’s Salvation Evangeline Jael Horne is our third child. My two boys were born while we were at seminary and we had the privilege of giving them to Jeff Meyers, our pastor at that time, for baptism. When Evangeline was born, however, I…
John Calvin writes in the Institutes about the possibility of admitting children to the Lord’s Supper by virtue of their baptism once and only once: At length they object, that there is not greater reason for admitting infants to baptism than to the Lord’s Supper, to which, however, they are…
The debate over paedocommunion does not seem to have made much headway on either side in recent years. Certainly both sides have made a solid effort to argue for their position. But no resolution seems to be forthcoming in the near future. As a convinced paedocommunionist, I find the church’s…
Lots of conservative Protestants want to answer “no” to this question. The problem with this position is that conservative Protestants are bound to believe what the Bible teaches. And the Bible says inconvenient things, like “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3.21), or “all of you who were baptized into…
This paper is something of a follow-up to my earlier study, “ Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future .” One of the more controversial aspects of that paper was my claim that Calvin held to a very high view of baptismal efficacy. Indeed, he was a…
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Bede ( Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool University Press - Translated Texts for Historians) ) neatly contrasts Sinai and the mount of Jesus’ sermon. Moses goes up alone on Sinai “since at that time the Scripture of the law was being committed solely to the people of Israel.” Jesus speaks…
Jesus’ claim that He will be “lifted up” fulfills Old Testament prophecies concerning the temple, according to Paul Hoskins ( Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Temple in the Gospel of John (Paternoster Biblical Monographs) , 156-7). When “God glorifies Jesus through the events of Jesus’ hour,” it fulfills promises…
Chalcedonian Christology, Pannenberg argues ( Jesus - God and Man (scm classics) , 344-5), presupposes an anthropology: “Openness to God is the radical meaning of that human ‘openness in relation to the world’ that constitutes man’s specific nature in distinction from all animals.” He goes on: “only under this presupposition…
Protestants make the best ecumenists. We aren’t absolutely invested in our traditional formulas, and we are always going back to the great consensus document of the Christian church, viz., the Bible. Conversely and for the same reason, ecumenists in more tradition-bound traditions become more Protestant. It’s no accident that the…
The Jews who clash with Jesus (John 8) claim to be Abraham’s seed ( sperma ) and Jesus agrees (v. 37). When the say that Abraham is their father, Jesus demurs: “if you are Abraham’s children ( tekna ) . . . . (v. 39). There’s a difference between being…
In his massive new The Gospel of John: A Commentary (115-6), Frederick Dale Bruner has this to say about Jesus’ promise to Nethaniel in John 1:51. He notes, first, that this is the first time Jesus speaks about Jesus; it is “Jesus’ first self-identification in a Gospel that is full…
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