Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation This essay is a brief argument that the soteriology of John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion regarding union with Christ and the imputation of his righteousness is the same as…
The thoughts in this paper were largely prompted by a study of Walter E. Krebs, “The Word and the Sacraments,” Mercersburg Review (July, 1867), 366-383. The discussion in this paper presupposes my earlier studies of baptism, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future” and “Calvin on Baptism,…
Sometimes our systematic theology creates an illusion of precision. For example, we distinguish the ground and instrument of justification. Justification is grounded in Christ’s work alone, and is instrumentally received by faith alone. That makes good sense and guards us from thinking that faith itself is somehow meritorious. All the…
Whenever we participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we remember Christ and His Work for us. We remember. And in remembering, we imitate God, as His creatures made after His image. God remembers. This is mysterious to us because we usually think of remembering in the context of our…
It is standard in paedobaptist circles to argue for the baptism of infants out of the Old Covenant system. Because there is no explicit command in the New Testament, we are left to the broader principles and patterns of Scripture. In the Old Covenant, we continually find that the children…
Luther popularized the law/gospel hermeneutic. Luther argued that any demands God made upon us fell into the category of “law” and could only condemn. By contrast, anything God gave us was “gospel” and came with no strings attached. Calvin paid lip service to this law/gospel antithesis, even though it was…
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I n a contribution to Bonds of Imperfection , Joan Lockwood O'Donovan examines varieties of nationalism and the neglected biblical and theological sources for understanding modern nations. She identifies two strains of nationalism that have developed since the nineteenth century. The first, “romantic nationalism,” takes the nation “as a unique…
T ight accommodations, high prices, delays and cancellations, abysmal customer service. Nearly everything is wrong with American airline companies. In Europe, by contrast, fares are lower and service is better. Even a brief 1 1/2 hour flight has time for a quick sandwich, a fair sight better than a packet…
I n an essay on von Balthasar's ontology of generosity (in Ordering Love ), David L. Schindler calls attention to the dualities we often invoke in “accounting for our experience”: “God and the world; the order of reality and the order of knowing; the soul, or mind, and the body;…
Charles Taylor's Modern Social Imaginaries examines fundamental features of the modern social imaginary, the “ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie…
C harles Taylor ( Modern Social Imaginaries ) observes that one of the great boasts of modernization has been to pacify war-mongering noblemen—to turn swords, if not to ploughshares, at least to shares: “the transition to the commercial stage was understood as having effected the great internal pacification of modern…
R oss Douthat argues that the cultural and religious diversity of Europe and the US is an enemy of democracy: “mass immigration and cultural fragmentation have brought authoritarian temptations back to life.” What to do? Douthat suggests that: The cause of liberal order might be better served by leaders who…
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