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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The first way to honor the Passion as a mysterion , Jenson argues, is liturgical ( Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics , 132-3): “We understand the cross as our reunion with God when we ourselves are made actors in the cross’s story,” especially, he argues, in the three-day celebration of Pascha.…
One of Douglas Campbell’s essays in Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul deals the dikaio - language of Paul, both as a noun (righteousness, dikaiosune ) and as a verb (“justify,” dikaioo ). Addressing the latter, Campbell rightly highlights the importance of Romans 6:7: “whoever has died is justified…
The first thing that came on my computer screen when I clicked the link to look over Ethan Zuckerman’s Atlantic essay on the ad-based web was a pop-up. Oh, the irony! as my kids like to say. Zuckerman has been in the web industry for a couple of decades, and…
Cesarean sections have gotten a lot safer over the past century plus. And as they’ve gotten safer, they’ve gotten a lot commoner. But Sarah Yager reports that there are costs attached to the increase: “unnecessary C-sections cost insurers an estimated $5 billion a year.” And the cost of the procedure…
Jenson gives a concise summary of the weaknesses of traditional atonement theories ( Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics , 128-30). There are “two paired errors.” The first separates the cross “from its future, in the resurrection.” As Jenson says, without the resurrection, the “in the Bible’s general view of reality, a…
One of the themes of Andrea Gabriel’s summary of Barth’s Doctrine of Creation is that, for Barth, the doctrine of creation is a doctrine about God. This brings some fresh insights to the fore. It means, Barth insists, that “God” is not “synonymous with the concept of a world-cause, rightly…
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