Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Misunderstanding “Galatianism” has caused several problems in the Reformed church. Because circumcision is at issue in the Galatian epistle, some have fallen into thinking that ritual per se, rather than anything uniquely Mosaic or Jewish, is the object of Paul’s critique. Likewise, his polemic against “works of the law” is…
Many texts in the NT become more perspicuous if we keep in mind the possibility — and indeed ubiquity — of Gentile God-fearers in the Old Covenant. After the special covenant with Israel is set up, Gentiles are not altogether excluded from the hope of salvation. Israel’s special status in…
I was once trying to get a sermon out of Ephesians 1.12-14 and it seemed obvious that I should look for two parallel statements both ending with the phrase, “to the praise of his glory.” Paul here begins talking about two groups of people (“you” and “we”), and he later…
WHY A DENOMINATION WITH SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN ROOTS SHOULD CAREFULLY CONSIDER THE “NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL” In my denomination, the PCA, we are continually haunted by the sins of our racist Southern past. It has become an annual rite at General Assembly for the issue to be addressed one way or…
Recent debates over whether or not, “justification is central” to Paul’s theology have reminded me of a sermon I once heard by a Presbyterian seminary student. This African American student challenged his audience on the sin of racism and the ways it might manifest itself among us. Like any good…
In Charles Hodge’s 1853 article, “Idea of the Church,” his stated aim is to analyze the idea of the Church proposed in the Apostles’ Creed, in which, “the Church is declared to be “the Communion of the Saints.” He writes: The conception of the Church as the communion of saints…
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A discarded fragment from a larger paper. Structuralism arose from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. He distinguished between the langue, the system of a language, and the parole, the particular utterances of a language. There is a circular relationship between them, since no parole makes sense unless there…
A discarded fragment from a larger paper. Structuralism arose from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. He distinguished between the langue, the system of a language, and the parole, the particular utterances of a language. There is a circular relationship between them, since no parole makes sense unless there…
Margaret Jacobs summarizes what she describes as “one of the most powerful metaphors in the Discourse : Descartes repudiates the wisdom of the ages, comparing it to those ‘old cities’ build on the foundations of ancient and medieval ruins. With a vision one imagines as shaped by the ordered and…
Margaret Jacobs summarizes what she describes as “one of the most powerful metaphors in the Discourse : Descartes repudiates the wisdom of the ages, comparing it to those ‘old cities’ build on the foundations of ancient and medieval ruins. With a vision one imagines as shaped by the ordered and…
That’s quite a weighty title for a small thought. Melville’s Ahab says that the world is nothing but a pasteboard mask, and all the colors of the world, its variety of shapes and its beauties, are nothing but a harlot’s painting on a more essential blankness, a whiteness like the…
Some paragraphs from an illuminating paper by Michael Allen Gillespie concerning Descartes’ links with Rosicrucians: “The Rosicrucians were essentially a Hermetic society that sought to understand the hidden order of nature in order to gain power over and through it. Agrippa, for example, wrote in 1655 that for ‘a magician…
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