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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As early as Xenophon, ingratitude has seen as a cause of sedition, and during the middle ages the social and political context of feudalism strengthened this link. Xenophon wrote, “And they [the Persians] bring one another to trial also charged with an offense for which people hate one another most…
In a brief 2002 essay on “Creator and Creature,” reprinted in Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics , Robert Jenson admits that “we indeed need to move conceptually outside the biblical narrative as such,” but he argues that common ways of conceptualizing the Creator-creature distinction are self-contradictory, incoherent, or depart from the…
Is China poised to rule the world? Will its growing economic and political clout fundamentally transform the way the world whirls? Ho-fung Hung ( China Boom ) doesn't think so. On the contrary, China “has both helped to perpetuate the existing U.S.-centered global neoliberal order and reshaped the balance of…
The contributors to Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity share a skepticism of accounts of “Rousseau the totalitarian” and “Rousseau the illiberal menace.” Positively, they share a conviction that Rousseau has great relevance to present day dilemmas. As editor Mark Hulliung says, “When it comes to whether we can attain…
Isaiah 19-20:6 is an oracle against Egypt. It's not good news for Egypt. Egypt will come under a savage king. The following verses evoke the plagues and the passage through the sea: waters dried up (v. 5), canals emit a stench as they did when the fish died in the…
Nikolaus Pevsner ( The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design ) quotes Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, writing in 1841: “There should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety . . . The smallest detail should . . . serve a purpose, and…
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