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…
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Eucharistic meditation, January 4: Haggai’s prophecy encourages the people of Israel to devote themselves to building the house of the Lord, in spite of opposition and the hostility of the nations. Among the judgments the Lord brings is a drought which leads to a famine: there is no dew, and…
Exhortation for January 4: Sexual immorality has marked all non-Christian civilizations. Leviticus 18 gives a laundry list of sexual sins ?Eincest, adultery, sodomy, bestiality?Eand ends with this exhortation: “Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you…
Does Paul have to deal with Jews who are confident that they are performing the law rightly, and believe that they have something to boast about before God because of their performance? Yes, of course. He’s dealing with Pharisees, of the kind that Jesus satirized in his parable, who boasted…
What are the issues for Paul? To oversimplify, but I hope helpfully: Much traditional treatment of Romans and other letters assumes that Paul is mainly concerned with individual soteriology, while recent Pauline scholarship emphasizes that Paul is concerned about the plight of Israel and the purposes of God among the…
What are the issues for Paul? To oversimplify, but I hope helpfully: Much traditional treatment of Romans and other letters assumes that Paul is mainly concerned with individual soteriology, while recent Pauline scholarship emphasizes that Paul is concerned about the plight of Israel and the purposes of God among the…
What is Paul trying to prove in Romans 1:18-3:20? Here are a few, non-exhaustive, suggestions: 1) He is trying to close “every mouth” and demonstrate that “all the world” is “accountable to God,” and guilty before Him. It is sometimes said in recent Pauline scholarship that this is not a…
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