Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Rounding Out the Traditional Doctrine of Justification Justification and the Church The traditional Protestant doctrine of justification fails to fully hold together the soteriological (forgiveness of sins) and the ecclesiological (covenant membership). This is part of a larger problem, of course, namely, the dichotomizing of church and salvation. Biblically and…
John Piper’s book, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002) is, from any perspective, a passionate work. Nevertheless, I find I need to disagree with parts of it. The reason I do this is not because John Piper’s book does…
What follows is a handout for a Sunday School class I have taught recently at my church . Presbyterian doctrine teaches what the Bible says about God sovereign control over history and his unconditional choice (election) to bring some people to everlasting glory while allowing others to remain in unbelief…
“Covenantal Nomism” sounds like a description of tiny contract-loving creatures who live underground. But it is actually a recent term used to describe the pattern of religious belief and practice in first-century Palestinian Judaism. The idea is that God graciously establishes a structured relationship based on promises, a “covenant,” with…
What follows deals primarily with two essays, one by Dr. Douglas Kelly and the other by The Rev. Richard Phillips . My reason for writing this essay is that many people are confidently saying things about N. T. Wright that I believe are contrary to fact. I choose Dr. Kelly…
The Bible is often treated as a book of rules with directions for living. To some extent, that is true; but it is neither the whole truth nor the most important truth about the book. Ultimately, the Bible is a story about God and man and their reconciliation in Christ.…
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John's description of the harlot city (Revelation 17:4-5) that he sees in the wilderness is written in four clauses: She is clothed; she is gilded; she holds something in her hand; and she has a name on her forehead. These four clauses describe seven pieces of the harlot's attire and…
Robert Jenson grasps the attractions of antinomianism: “perhaps only on the edge of antinomianism does the true bite of the gospel appear” ( Ezekiel , 62). Yet Christians must stop short of the edge, because “falling over that edge is . . . the disaster of faith.” This is not…
When I published some articles on the German-American philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973) on the web a decade or more ago, I received an email from Norman Fiering, Director and Librarian Emeritus of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. A student of Rosenstock-Huessy’s at Dartmouth College during the 1950s,…
The verb porneuo and noun porneia are prominent themes in Revelation. Two of the seven churches of Asia are warned about factions that commit acts of immorality (2:14, 20), and the great harlot Babylon fornicates with the kings of the earth (17:2; 18:3, 9). The noun form, porneia , appears…
Not surprisingly, Robert Jenson spends a lot of time in his Brazos commentary on Ezekiel talking about Trinity and Christology and other topics that biblical scholars would tell him do not appear in Ezekiel's prophecy. He knows that his method will offend “the modern exegetical academy's chief dogma,” namely, the…
“Eschatology and violence are intrinsically connected,” writer Robert Jenson ( Ezekiel , 76). So much the worse for eschatology, one might say. It needs to be purged from Scripture and theology. The problem, Jenson says, is that when we purge the violence, “nothing is left” (76, fn 5). The violence…
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