Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Book Review The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation & Evangelism by Norman Shepherd The Call of Grace is an excellent manual to put in the hands of laymen to teach them how to rest in God’s grace while taking seriously the prize of the upward call of…
My Role as a Parent in My Children’s Salvation Evangeline Jael Horne is our third child. My two boys were born while we were at seminary and we had the privilege of giving them to Jeff Meyers, our pastor at that time, for baptism. When Evangeline was born, however, I…
John Calvin writes in the Institutes about the possibility of admitting children to the Lord’s Supper by virtue of their baptism once and only once: At length they object, that there is not greater reason for admitting infants to baptism than to the Lord’s Supper, to which, however, they are…
The debate over paedocommunion does not seem to have made much headway on either side in recent years. Certainly both sides have made a solid effort to argue for their position. But no resolution seems to be forthcoming in the near future. As a convinced paedocommunionist, I find the church’s…
Lots of conservative Protestants want to answer “no” to this question. The problem with this position is that conservative Protestants are bound to believe what the Bible teaches. And the Bible says inconvenient things, like “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3.21), or “all of you who were baptized into…
This paper is something of a follow-up to my earlier study, “ Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future .” One of the more controversial aspects of that paper was my claim that Calvin held to a very high view of baptismal efficacy. Indeed, he was a…
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W hat is the thrust of the argument in Romans 4? Is Paul mainly concerned to present Abraham as an example of individual belief and trust in God? Or is the argument mainly about Abraham as father of both Jews and Gentiles? Is Abraham's faith presented as the means by…
A ttacked by his enemies, David cries out, asking God to judge. He prays for favorable judgment for himself, or, in Pauline terminology, for justification. In the Psalms, justification is a drama that has a consistent shape—threat, anguished protest and prayer, God's intervention, rescue and punishment, rejoicing. I have examined…
F rom Whitman's Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass : The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most…
I n what context does “justification” fit? Does the word describe what happens to sinners when they are restored to the favor of God in their individual experience? Or is it instead, or also, a description of something that happened in the life-history of Jesus, as He lives a life…
L ike many Americans, I've spent an inordinate proportion of the past two years thinking about Donald Trump. I've written more about the 2016 Presidential election than about any other political event in my lifetime. Recently, someone said he thought I was a Trump supporter. That surprised me, but on…
L uke Bretherton argues ( Christianity, Democracy and the Shadow of Constantine ) that “For the church, listening is the constitutive political act” (71). This is true in part because “Through listening and responding to the Word of God, the Church is assembled as a public body—the ekklesia —out of…
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