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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Emery points out that Thomas’ Trinitarian account of creation makes the Word the art of God: “The Word is . . . the reason of creatures from a double point of view, that of exemplar causality (the expression, the conception of creatures) and that of efficient causality (the accomplishment of…
According to Gilles Emery, Aquinas provides a Trinitarian account of creation. The processions within the being of God are the uncreated exemplars of the acts of creation. Emery (in a contribution to The Theology of Thomas Aquinas ): “In God, procession signified the essential communication of the fullness of divinity:…
Anna Wilson has a stimulating essay on the rise of biography after the conversion of Constantine, the Vita Constantini of Eusebius being the leading model. The rise of biography manifests the change in the fortunes of the church, as bios replaced martyrion as the leading subject of Christian biographical writing.…
An anonymous homily of the late 4th century: “Scripture has taken the Sabbath to mean rest . . . . So also the Lord having wrought the consummation, having suffered on Friday and finished his works for the restoration of fallen man, rests the seventh day and abides in the…
Barnes notes an incident recorded by Sozomen that represents the typical relationship between church and emperor under Constantine. Basil of Ancyra, along with a number of other bishops, was deposed by the Council of Constantinople in 360. It was alleged that Basil”gave orders to the civil authorities to sentence clergy…
Gibbon wrote that “the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers, which had never been imposed on the free spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced and confirmed by the legal establishment of Christianity” with the result that “a secret conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions embarrassed the operations…
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