Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While I think Zacharias Ursinus’ thinking would be profitable to consider, I am not recording his reflections in order for readers to come to agreement with his position as a whole. Rather, my interest is twofold. First, I think the way the Heidelberg Catechisms is used as a “proof” of…
On this question Hebrews 10 is quite clear and really needs no additional argument. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume…
Not all readers of this essay letter may be aware of it, but a tempest has been brewing in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a tempest created by the liberal party in that denomination. It came about this way. In January 2002, a Pastor’s Conference on covenant theology was…
Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years. But let me elaborate. When I became a Calvinist, back in 1970, I bought a bunch of books. Over the next few years,…
CHRIST THE PREACHER How Ephesians Shows Us Why Preaching is Essential to Salvation & Sanctification Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a…
Tracking the informal shifts in Protestant opinion regarding Baptism can be a difficult business. For example, in 1849 Anglican clergyman William Goode published his defense of Evangelicalism against the Anglo-Catholics under the title, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of…
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Bultmann notoriously claimed that no one who switches on an electric light or uses the cutting edge technology of the “wireless” can believe in a world of demons and angels. That’s not much of an argument, but insofar as it is one, it seems to be: Electric lights show that…
In an elder meeting this week, Doug Wilson pointed to the promise at Noah’s birth that he would bring rest from work and from the toil arising from the cursed ground (Genesis 6:29). Doug made the interesting point that Noah embodies a reconciliation of herder and farmer, of Cain and…
Another student points out the rhetorical effect of the words of the parents of the blind man in John 9. When the Pharisees ask if the blind man was their son, and born blind, they say “Ask him. He is of age.” When they do ask him, the blind man…
Jesus’ trial before Pilate takes place near Passover, but it’s a Day of Atonement, as Barabbas is selected to go free and Jesus sent outside the camp bearing the sins of His people. A student, Stephanie Beauchamp, points to another Day-of-Atonement theme in John’s account. Throughout the narrative, Pilate is…
According to Thomas Heilke, “the church under Constantine is ‘imperialized,’ and made ‘subservient’ to the interests of the empire.” That judgment rests partly on factual errors (e.g., Constantine took charge of the church’s affairs, administered church discipline, decided on orthodoxy by presiding at Nicea). But it also rests on a…
Gerard Schlabach, though working in a Yoderian tradition, warns that wholesale condemnation of “Constantinianism” is a mistake: “there is even something right about the vision of Christendom - as that societas in which every right relationship with God is rightly ordering and reintegrating every relationship and all of life.” Christendom…
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