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.…
Showing page 234 of 309
Showing page 36 of 43
Leviticus is the oilest book of the Bible. The Hebrew shemen is used 42 times (6 x 7); the closest competitor is Numbers, with 34 uses. The uses of shemen are clustered. Leviticus 2 uses the word 9 times, all with reference to the preparation of the tribute offering (…
Why do so many Egyptian statues have broken noses? Julia Wolkoff summarizes the answer of Brooklyn Museum curator Edward Bleiberg. Noses protrude, and so are more apt to be knocked off accidentally, but the pattern is too consistent to be accident. Erosion could account for some, but not all. Bleiberg…
Some snippets from Philip Turner's Christian Ethics and the Church . The premise of Turner's book is well summarized by a passage he quotes from Sabina Lovibond's Ethical Formation : "The ethical, let us say, pertains to what people learn to value through immersion in a community acquainted with ideas…
Levitical offerings send a "soothing aroma" ( reyach nichoach ) to Yahweh. Israel needs to produce good smells because her sin is noxious to Yahweh. When Israel rebels, His "nose burns." By slaughtering a substitute animal and turing it to smoke, Israel soothes Yahweh's hot nose. But that can't be…
“Spiritual reading” is usually associated with patristic, monastic, and medieval modes of reading. It's fruitful, however, to shift the focus and ask what the Spirit has to do with our reading. The Spirit is the enlivening breath of God, the water of God who makes us into a fruitful garden.…
Liberalism is "in origin primarily a refusal of ecclesial power." So write John Milbank and Adrian Pabst ( Politics of Virtue , 31). In refusing ecclesial power, early modern political theorists renounced the arrangement of Latin Christendom. The "first polity knowing no bounds and truly based upon the rule of…
Showing page 46 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
