Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation This essay is a brief argument that the soteriology of John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion regarding union with Christ and the imputation of his righteousness is the same as…
The thoughts in this paper were largely prompted by a study of Walter E. Krebs, “The Word and the Sacraments,” Mercersburg Review (July, 1867), 366-383. The discussion in this paper presupposes my earlier studies of baptism, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future” and “Calvin on Baptism,…
Sometimes our systematic theology creates an illusion of precision. For example, we distinguish the ground and instrument of justification. Justification is grounded in Christ’s work alone, and is instrumentally received by faith alone. That makes good sense and guards us from thinking that faith itself is somehow meritorious. All the…
Whenever we participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we remember Christ and His Work for us. We remember. And in remembering, we imitate God, as His creatures made after His image. God remembers. This is mysterious to us because we usually think of remembering in the context of our…
It is standard in paedobaptist circles to argue for the baptism of infants out of the Old Covenant system. Because there is no explicit command in the New Testament, we are left to the broader principles and patterns of Scripture. In the Old Covenant, we continually find that the children…
Luther popularized the law/gospel hermeneutic. Luther argued that any demands God made upon us fell into the category of “law” and could only condemn. By contrast, anything God gave us was “gospel” and came with no strings attached. Calvin paid lip service to this law/gospel antithesis, even though it was…
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The Weekly Standard parody of the KMart-Sears merger (Nov 29) is too rich. The parody is a letter purporting to be from a market researcher to the KMart board of directors. Here’s a couple of samples: “We recently received the preliminary report from our $30-million, 5-year contract with ImagInc, who…
Kenneth Minogue provides a superb summary of the case for the Bush foreign policy in the Nov 12 issue of TLS : “the United States is an open liberal democracy with which millions of Europeans are directly acquainted, and it has been our sheet-anchor against both fascist and Communist totalitarianism…
Peter Green, reviewing Paul Cartledge’s new Alexander biography in TNR , cites a “remarkable anecdote told by Theophrastus, who surely had it from Aristotle when the latter was Alexander’s tutor”: “Both Philip and Olympias, he alleges, were scared that their adolescent son was showing signs of becoming a GYMNIS, that…
John 1:14; 6:55-56: ?And the Word became flesh . . . . [Jesus said] ?My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in Him.?E This morning, we have been considering the incarnation of…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don?t often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
This repeats some material from an earlier post. INTRODUCTION In the last several classes, we have been looking at sacrifice as it operated in the OC, both in the Mosaic and the Davidic worship. We have seen that Mosaic worship follows a sequence of purification-ascension-communion, and we have seen that…
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