Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Book Review The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation & Evangelism by Norman Shepherd The Call of Grace is an excellent manual to put in the hands of laymen to teach them how to rest in God’s grace while taking seriously the prize of the upward call of…
My Role as a Parent in My Children’s Salvation Evangeline Jael Horne is our third child. My two boys were born while we were at seminary and we had the privilege of giving them to Jeff Meyers, our pastor at that time, for baptism. When Evangeline was born, however, I…
John Calvin writes in the Institutes about the possibility of admitting children to the Lord’s Supper by virtue of their baptism once and only once: At length they object, that there is not greater reason for admitting infants to baptism than to the Lord’s Supper, to which, however, they are…
The debate over paedocommunion does not seem to have made much headway on either side in recent years. Certainly both sides have made a solid effort to argue for their position. But no resolution seems to be forthcoming in the near future. As a convinced paedocommunionist, I find the church’s…
Lots of conservative Protestants want to answer “no” to this question. The problem with this position is that conservative Protestants are bound to believe what the Bible teaches. And the Bible says inconvenient things, like “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3.21), or “all of you who were baptized into…
This paper is something of a follow-up to my earlier study, “ Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future .” One of the more controversial aspects of that paper was my claim that Calvin held to a very high view of baptismal efficacy. Indeed, he was a…
Showing page 238 of 309
Showing page 33 of 43
Thomas Altizer of “death of God” fame is back, advocating for what he calls the Apocalyptic Trinity . This is not your grandma's “primordial Trinity” that is “the subject of all established doctrines of the Trinity.” That primordial Trinity bring “a total closure to apocalypse, even if there is an…
Ranko Stefanovic ( Revelation of Jesus Christ , 229-30) notes that interpreting the first of the horsemen of the apocalypse - the white rider - is determinative for the understanding the whole sequence. The first rider, he claims, symbolizes the “conquest of the gospel of Christ and its spread throughout…
The restoration of Judah involves a restoration of the Davidic kingship, the coronation and elevation of a Davidic king. Yahweh promises to send a new Davidic king who will rule with justice (Isaiah 32:1; cf. 9:1-7; 11:1-10). This addresses the complaints that Isaiah has brought against Judah from the beginning…
In a superb essay in The Guardian , John Mullan (like Wayne Booth in his Rhetoric of Fiction ) explains how Jane Austen's Emma transformed the writing of fiction. She found a way to split the difference between the omniscient third-person narrator and the limited first-person narrator, creating what came…
After the seventh seal is opened, there is silence in heaven for a half hour as an angel stands at an altar to offer incense with the prayers of the saints. There are two altars in the temple - the altar of ascensions in the courtyard and the golden altar…
The second half of Isaiah 22 focuses on two individuals, the current royal steward of the house of David and his eventual replacement, Shebna and Eliakim. What happens to them exemplifies what Yahweh is doing to Judah and Jerusalem. The current royal steward, Shebna, has spent his tenure planning a…
Showing page 331 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
