Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference and the Assurance of Grace Recently, there has been some controversy over the presentations of four speakers at the Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference. Accusations have been made including a denial of justification by faith alone and something close enough to “baptismal regeneration” that it…
Today, many in the Reformed world view a meritorious covenant of works as essential to a proper understanding of the gospel. These theologians believe that God set up a program in the Garden by which Adam would merit eternal life and blessing by his obedience. These same theologians usually regard…
After I graduated from college in 1989, I spent a summer in the Atlanta area in Georgia learning that I was not cut out for construction work. Then I met George Grant, one of my favorite authors. He was working for a church in South Florida in charge of their…
One meaning of “righteousness” in the Bible is moral uprightness. Perhaps a more basic meaning would be faithfulness. For example, Psalm 96.13 praises God, saying: He will judge the world in righteousness, And the peoples in faithfulness. In Hebrew poetry two lines often say the same thing using different words.…
I once saw “eschatology” defined as the study of edible French snails. But it really means the doctrine of the last things in Christian theology. In American Evangelical culture it is usually reduced to science fiction stories. But for the Apostle Paul it was actually the key to the Christian…
To understand the view of Nicholas Thomas Wright regarding Christ’s work of redemption, one must begin with the centrality of Adam to the plight of the human race. Anyone who has heard Wright’s lectures on Philippians will not be able to forget his haunting appeal to Genesis 5.3 as a…
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Richard Jenkyns reviews Susan Ruden’s The Golden Ass in the current TLS . He highlights the oddity of Apuleius’s Latin style: “He did the things that classic Latin style had eschewed. He liked loosely hanging clauses, symmetries, echoing phrases, rocking rhythms and hints of rhyme. At the start of The…
In a letter to the TLS , Ohio State’s Hannibal Hamlin celebrates Tobit’s dog: “the only domestic pet in the Bible is the dog in the Book of Tobit. His presence in the story is entirely gratuitous but also entirely positive, keeping his master, Tobit’s son Tobias, company as he…
Is the fact that God reveals Himself in human language a “paradox”? It might seem so. God is incomprehensible, and always exceeds our conceptualizations and verbalizations of Him. To attempt to render this incomprehensible God into human language, with its limits and ambiguities, seems impossible. Yet God does it. Hence,…
Lutherans aren’t supposed to have a doctrine of sanctification. Nobody told Luther ( Larger Catechism , on the Apostles Creed, 51-53.): “I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one…
Following some insights from John Paul II, I reflect on the crucial importance of the early chapters of Genesis for Christian analysis of culture at Firstthings.com .
Richard Hays gave a wonderful lecture on the creeds and the gospels at the Trinity School of Ministry conference. A few highlights: 1) From Matthew, he pointed to the fact that people bow to/worship Jesus seven times in the gospel. This might be taken as no more than civil worship,…
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