Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Keeping the Law Paul states just as emphatically as James that the doers of the law will be justified (Rom. 2:13; James 2:14ff). But who are these doers of the law? Is Paul speaking hypothetically of a class of sinless people who do not really exist? Or does he have…
I have entitled this super-condensed piece to capture interest, but the fact is it sets forth what I have believed and taught long before I had ever heard of the so-called “new perspective.” For example, one can look at my paper on Ephesians 2.15 , written before I had ever…
N. T. Wright and other “New Perspective on Paul” (NPP) theologians have been criticized and condemned for speaking of justification in various “tenses.” In fact, Wright typically begins discussions of justification with future justification and works his way back to the present. But this is hardly a novelty. While the…
A doctrine of “faith alone” must be explicated and lived out in the light of the larger story of faithfulness, a story that reaches its climax in Jesus, the faithful Messiah. Indeed, the idea of “faith alone,” and even Paul’s use of the OT in service of that idea, makes…
In every city in the United States there are at least a couple of Christian radio stations which broadcast preaching around the clock, seven days a week. Many areas have a Christian television station or two which broadcast worship services several hours a day. Almost any bookstore will have a…
The queston has been discussed: which is prior, faith or repentance? It is an unnecessary question and the insistence that one is prior to the other is futile. There is no priority. The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith and the repentance that is unto life is…
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The church’s stance with regard to civil order is neatly articulated in Romans, provided we read chapters 12-13 together. Romans 13 makes it clear that God has given rulers the sword, and that they are to use it for just vengeance. They bear the sword to punish evildoers and to…
D espite its claims to the contrary, Patrick Deneen writes in a 2014 piece in The American Conservative , “liberalism was never about ‘limited' government” or curbing absolutism. Rather, liberalism is about “the pursuit and exercise of potentially limitless power toward seemingly ‘limited' ends of securing Rights.” The limitation on…
I n David's final speech (1 Chronicles 29), he offers a fivefold praise of God's perfections (v. 11): Yours is . . . 1. Greatness ( gedolah ) 2. Power ( giburah , related to gibbor , “mighty man”) 3. Glory 4. Victory 5. Majesty He adds an expansive note…
P atrick Murray's essay in Culmination of Capital lays out sixfold aim of Marx's Capital : to present and examine in the form of a systematic dialectic the social forms constitutive of the capitalist order, beginning with the (generalized) commodity; to expose capitalist society, in its enlightened secularism, to be…
I n the Divine Institutes , Lactantius takes on Plato's endorsement of common property. He makes a grudging admission that it might be “supported so long as it appears to refer only to money.” After all, “everyone should be wise enough to despise money!” (translation from From Irenaeus to Grotius…
“W e dismiss what philosophers take to be the fundamental exercise of justice,” writes Ambrose in his Christianized Ciceronian treatise de officiis (translation, F rom Irenaeus to Grotius , 84-5). According to Ambrose's summary, philosophical justice takes as “the primary criterion . . . that we do no harm except…
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