Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
During one of my AAPC lectures I read a portion of Richard Mitchell’s provocative little book The Underground Grammarian . Here’s the portion I read: The mind is a rudderless wanderer blown here or there by any puff of breeze. If I mention watermelons, you must think of watermelons; if…
This is the donation thank-you essay for January 2008. Our studies in the Psalms go out month by month in response to donations. I’m putting this one up here as an example, and also because the version I actually mailed out contained several egregious arithmetical errors! So, here is the…
Part 1: Introduction The collapse of the Western tradition in the United States, seen in the hostility to Christianity in government and education, and the elimination of “traditional” or “canon” learning from our institutions of middle and higher learning, provides a crisis and an opportunity for serious believers at the…
While “forgiving oneself” is widely accepted in the secular world as a legitimate and needful thing to do, Christians are rightly suspicious. After all, God is the one who forgives. When we sin against other people, we need to seek their forgiveness, not our own. Nevertheless after looking at Vine’s…
This was originally published as HIStory in the column, “A Pastor’s Perspective” in Ligonier Ministrie’s Tabletalk Magazine . I am not sure of the date but it was probably published in 1999 or 2000. Quick! What’s the basic message of the Bible? Summarize it in as few words as possible…
A Brief Explanation of What a Presbytery Is & Why Pastors in Presbyterian Denominations are Members of Them A belief in the primacy of the local congregation of the Church, I think, reflects the gut feeling of most North American Evangelicals. As a result, the form of Church government universally…
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Biblical writers often use "text painting": the form of the text portrays the topic of the text. The first half of the flood narrative describes the rising waters, steadily raising the ark toward heaven. The second half describes the descending waters. At the center: "Yahweh remembered Noah" (Genesis 8:1). Rise,…
A response to Jordan Ballor’s review of my Creator , which was published at Acton.org on August 12. 1. Ballor says that, to avoid pantheism or panentheism, God’s identity as creator must be “relative, secondary, or conditional.” He rightly says that I argue the opposite: “God is Creator” is the…
Jonathan Edwards didn’t think the world is a machine. At the heart of the mechanistic interpretation of Newtonian physics, he discerned, was the notion that “bodies” are (in Robert Jenson’s words) “the sort of thing that either can or cannot act ‘properly by themselves.’” The mechanistic world picture involved an…
Joshua Jipp argues that Paul's Areopagus address contains both critique and propaganda, critique of Athenian superstition, lust for novelty, and idolatry, and propaganda in favor of Christian faith as a more consistent fulfillment of the aspirations of Hellenistic philosophical theology. Much of the critique, Jipp shows, is drawn from Isaiah's…
Cobbling together some notes for a lecture series, I was reminded of Seamus Heaney's little poem, " Anahorish ." The Gaelic name means “place of clear water,” as the first line indicates, and the etymology suggests a place of purity and innocence. Anahorish was near Heaney’s childhood home in County…
In an article in the Harvard Law Review from the early 1980s, Robert cover explores the relation of legal structure and narrative. His analysis has wide-ranging legal, political, and even theological import. Cover states the thesis early: We live in “normative universes,” social worlds that distinguish between right and wrong,…
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