Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Click HERE for an audio version of this article. For part 1 of this series, click HERE . The New Covenant changes none of this. There is nothing new or odd about Mary’s sitting at Jesus’ feet, nothing strange about various “deaconesses” serving the Incarnate Tabernacle. Paul affirms that in…
An Introduction Despite my rather hectic schedule as a father and pastor, I’ve become more and more concerned that a tract defending God’s sovereignty and fore-ordination of all things would be a helpful tool for the Reformed pastor–one converstational in tone and persuasive in style. I have decided to undertake…
There has been a great deal of controversy in the various conservative Reformed microdenominations in North America. Since I am a pastor in one of these and have been advocating a return to the historic Protestant and Confessional view over again the baptistic mutation that is now prevalent in our…
I have recently written on justification as a covenant status and justification and adoption , understood as joining with Christ and his family at the Lord’s Supper . I write about things like this because it seems quite common in America to denigrate the need for community in one’s commitment…
Samuel Miller was one of the early professors at Princeton Theological Seminary. As a Presbyterian he wrote a book that defended infant baptism . Miller’s book was fine, but his appendix on baptismal regeneration seems problematic. Of course, his initial attack on superstition is quite warranted, but I am speaking…
Awhile back I wrote the following, first quoting from the author of the excellent book, A Baptism That Saves : The sacramental view [of baptism] most accords with the idea of God’s initiating a covenant by his sovereign decree in election–effecting this through effectual calling. This is because, instead of…
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In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume proposes an evolutionary progress from natural polytheism to more developed monotheism. This, he thinks, is the natural and virtually inevitable progress: “As far as writing or history reaches, mankind, in ancient times, appears universally to have been polytheists” and idolaters. It makes…
Protestant problematics about sacraments still run in the background of early modern debates about religion. In response to evidence of similarities between Jewish and “savage” Indian religion, some early modern thinkers argued that the ritual similarities were marginal to Judaism. Some thought of Jewish ceremonies as a kind of prophylactic…
Many scholars have concluded that the Jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 is an idealized portrait of an institution that Israel never practiced. In a 2003 essay in Vetus Testamentum , Lee Casperson takes issue with this viewpoint: “There are extensive parallels in the ancient Near East, long predating the entry…
Leigh Trevaskis tries to suss out the rationale for sticking Leviticus 24 (menorah, showbread, blasphemy) between Leviticus 23 (Israel’s festival calendar) and Leviticus 25 (Jubilee). He proposes a symbolic solution to the puzzle. He observes that chapter 24 begins with a reverence to “light” (v. 2), alluding back to the…
Esther Lightcap Meek presents the most devastating little critiques of epistemological dualism I’ve ever read near the beginning of A Little Manual for Knowing . Epistemological dualism describes the way we “distinguish knowledge from beliefs, facts from values, reason from faith, theory from application, thought from emotion, mind from body,…
Halbertal ( On Sacrifice , 72-3) offers this fine analysis of the self-justificating moves of aggressors: “The mind can play complicated games, and among them is the accusation that an aggressor directs toward his victim for causing him to become violent, which all too easily turns into a justification for…
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