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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Philip Terzian isn't much disturbed by the tumult in the Republican Party. He concedes that the Party is going through some changes, whose outcome remains to be seen: "The coalition that propelled Donald Trump into the White House may be a harbinger of the party’s future, or it might have…
In his Death, Burial, and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity , Jon Davies attends to the communal significance of the deaths of biblical patriarchs. He writes, "Jacob is gathered ‘unto his people,' not explicitly unto his God. On the orders of his son Joseph, Jacob was embalmed (a rare…
Julie Bindel's study of The Pimping of Prostitution takes a sustained, unrelenting look behind the veil of what's euphemistically called "sex work." According to the TLS reviewer , Bindel's study is based on "interviews with fifty current or former sex workers in thirty-five countries, from New Zealand to rural India,…
"We encounter reality only if we approach it on all the paths which we, as creatures, can tread," writes Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 230). He's commending his quadrilateral cross of reality, arguing that we must pursue the fourfold path of "the soul, of reason, culture, and…
CP Snow's famously complained about the divergence between "two cultures" of humanism and science. Among Romantic poets, the humanist resistance to science is best exemplified by Blake. As Algis Valiunas observes , Blake's "unflattering" painting of Newton depicts him as "a consummate specimen of a particular human type, and it…
"Once upon a time," writes Anthony Madrid , "there were two traditions in Anglophone poetry. On the one hand, there was poetry that was completely easy to understand and whose elegance depended on translucent phrases and straightforward sentiments. On the other hand, there was the hard stuff: poetry where the…
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