Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
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In his Teaching Company lectures on Chaucer Seth Lerer notes the ethnic and class distinction between terms for game and animals and the terms for the food produced from the game. Deer, cow, lamb, pig are all Anglo-Saxon; venison, beef, mutton, and pork are all French. The language traces the…
A thought inspired by Oswald Bayer’s Living By Faith: Justification and Sanctification : The doctrine of justification has something ?EI know not what ?Eto say to the postmodern suspicion of “the objectifying gaze.” Justification is fundamentally about the gaze of God, about who is just in the “eyes of God”…
Luther writes: “The Father in divine things is Grammatica, for he gives the Word and is the pure fountainhead from which, if one may so speak, floweth good, excellent, pure speech. Ths Son is Dialectica; for He giveth the arrangement whereby a thing should be set in good order of…
Now the King Shlomoh loved women, Foreign ones, Many. And the daughter of Pharaoh. Moabiyyot Ammanoyyot Adomyyot Tzedniyyot Chittiyyot From the nations which Yahweh said to the sons of Israel, ?You shall not enter into them And they shall not enter into you. Truly they will turn away your heart…
Justification is not the end of a story, but the beginning. Consider Noah, who was righteous in his generations, and who was seen/judged righteous before Yahweh. To be justified is to be distinguished from the wicked generation. To be justified is to be preserved when the judgment falls. To be…
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