Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Study in Biblical and Practical Theology Sunday School Notes / Epiphany 2004 Introductory Note: January 6 is Epiphany in the traditional church calendar. Though Epiphany is often treated as a single day, with the Sundays following counted as “Sundays after Epiphany,” we will treat Epiphany as an extended season.…
Imagine someone from another world trying to learn to live in our society according to our customs. What if someone gave him a check for a hundred dollars for his birthday–the first check he had ever seen in his life? Would he immediately understand how a check was used? Perhaps…
According to Presbyterian doctrine, as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, baptism is a baptized person’s “admission… into the visible church.” By referring to the “visible church,” the document makes clear it is referring to the present institutional Church with all her imperfections, as opposed to the future Church…
N. T. Wright claims that in the Apostle Paul’s writings “righteousness,” as it predicated of humans, denotes “covenant membership.” When he wrote this in the New Bible Dictionary edited by Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, and David Wright, no one thought this was too big a deal. However, when he…
It seems almost human nature to think that we can find something to do for God that will make Him do us favors. If we live more virtuously, or cut down on a vice or two, then God will have to reward us. But the problem with this notion is…
The First Commandment teaches us to trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. The First Commandment reads (I’m using NASB throughout): “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Obviously, trusting in someone or something else (even one’s own good works) for justification, sanctification, and eternal life”…
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R owan Williams ( Sign and Sacrifice ) summarizes the Anselmian understanding of the atonement using the categories of sacrifice, obedience, and gift, all set within a Trinitarian frame. It's quite lovely. Citing Hebrews citing Psalm 40, Williams argues that the Old Testament sacrificial system existed to symbolize the true…
D escribing the assignments of Levite gatekeepers, the Chronicler records that there were four at the “highway” at the western end of the temple, and two “at the Parbar,” which was also on the west (1 Chronicles 26:18). Scholars have proposed a variety of foreign etymologies for the term. From…
D enis McNamara's How To Read Churches is an extraordinary book. Subtitled “a crash course in ecclesiastical architecture,” it covers building types, floor plans, sections of churches (nave, apse, choir), materials, windows, altars, ornaments in 256, 6 x 6-inch pages, each of which is stuffed with pictures and diagrams and…
J ohn Milbank cites what he calls “Socrates's subversive realization” that “education can never be democratic” ( Being Reconciled , 182). This is in part because “the sheer singular uniqueness and contingency of wisdom is unable to subordinate itself to any majority,” partly because “if one is to learn, one…
T hrough a series of thought experiments, Richard Foley ( Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others ) develops a concept of rationality as “a matter of making oneself invulnerable to intellectual self-criticism to the extent possible, of living up to one’s own deepest intellectual convictions and standards.” Rationality thus “requires…
F ollowing Alvin Platinga, Richard Foley summarizes the principles of Locke's epistemology in three principles ( Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others ): Evidence (the “obligation to base one's opinion on one's evidence,” the latter defined as “what one knows with certainty”); appraisal (the obligation “to appraise the probability of…
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