Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When someone expounds the way of salvation found in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms and in the easily-accessible writings of the Reformed heritage, he often finds him embroiled in a debates about the covenant of works and the Mosaic Covenant. One is “proven” to be aberrant by allegations that one…
The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of course, because it means that all the…
One of the odd features of Michael Horton’s version of Covenant theology is his interpretation of the covenant God made with Abraham 1 in Genesis 15. According to Horton, The very way in which God made the covenant with Abraham (putting him to sleep; walking through the torn animals by…
What was I trying to do, when I wrote my book on Mark’s Gospel ? Fundamentally, I wanted a book that would change readers by making them better readers of the Gospel of Mark. My ideal reader is not someone who goes to the book to use as a resource…
Why do we need sacraments? According to the Westminster Confession, sacraments were instituted by Christ “to confirm our interest in him” (27.1), “to strengthen and increase” the “faith” of those within the Covenant of Grace and “to distinguish them from those that are without” that covenant (Westminster Larger Catechism, #162).…
In Isaiah 5:1-7, we have a typical covenant lawsuit, in which the Lord accuses his people of rejecting his grace and mercy. It is not my intention here to exegete the entire passage, or to look at the way the vineyard image used here serves as a metaphor in other…
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It's a common complaint that Africans convert to Christianity not for high-minded religious reasons but for self-interested secular reasons. Drawing on the work of C.C. Okorocha on the Igbo, Andrew Walls disputes this way of framing the issue ( The Missionary Movement in Christian History ): “Religion was always in…
According to Charlotte Gordon's NYTBR review, Michael Knox Beran's Murder by Candlelight “asks us to consider our own hearts of darkness, why we’re obsessed with murder stories, why this obsession matters, and what it suggests about us as a culture and a species.” Beran reaches back into the nineteenth century…
The NYT 's obituary for Oliver Sacks mentions that his 2007 Musicophilia was written partly in response to Steven Pinker's claim that music is “auditory cheesecake, an evolutionary accident piggybacking on language.” Sacks “pointed to [music's] ability to reach dementia patients as evidence that music appreciation is hard-wired into the…
In his recent book on Bonhoeffer's Seminary Vision , Paul House notes that Bonhoeffer insists (in Cost of Discipleship ) that we cannot pit Jesus against Paul. One of the key continuities between the two is baptism. Bonhoeffer writes, “Where the Synoptic Gospels speak of Christ calling men and their…
A couple of weeks back, I suggested that part of Trump's appeal lies in the fact that he resists the scapegoating dynamics of contemporary media and politics. He refuses to take blame. That, Girard would have us believe, undoes the whole scapegoat mechanism; by unmasking the system, it energizes those…
The TLS reviewer is supposed to be reviewing Marilynne Robinson's Lila , but along the way gives a lovely description of what makes Robinson's first novel, Housekeeping , an enduring treasure: “Grave without being heavy, Housekeeping remains Robinson's most lyrically beautiful book. The text weaves together gothic tropes, mystic invocations…
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