Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the first installment of this essay, I offered the following chiastic outline of 1 Timothy: A. 1:1-2. Paul greets Timothy as a true child of the Faith, and blesses with grace, mercy, and peace. B. 1:3-7. Timothy is urged to command against heresy. C. 1:8-11. The reason the Law…
In the first installment of this essay, I offered the following chiastic outline of 1 Timothy: A. 1:1-2. Paul greets Timothy as a true child of the Faith, and blesses with grace, mercy, and peace. B. 1:3-7. Timothy is urged to command against heresy. C. 1:8-11. The reason the Law…
In the Bible, a memorial is something that brings God's promises and previous actions to mind, so that He can do them again. The rainbow is the model, set in heaven so that Yahweh remembers the covenant He makes with Noah (Genesis 9:13-15). God is light and dwells in a…
The First Epistle to Timothy fits neatly in the context of what King Jesus and the church are doing in the gospels, in Acts, Revelation, and all of the Apostolic Age in between. Paul writes to Timothy to encourage him in his work as a pastor in the “latter days,”…
I have been pastoring Cornerstone Reformed Church in Carbondale, Illinois since 1999. We are members of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), but have been practicing catholicity for many years, both personally and corporately. I’ve always believed that the Church of Jesus Christ is much more than the local…
Ecumenism is easy to talk about. It’s doing something to promote it that’s the problem. As a pastor in a town with churches of different denominations, all of whom love their doctrinal distinctions and are jealous to defend them whenever they perceive the slightest challenge, how can you be ecumenical…
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The Incarnation of God by John Clark and Marcus Peter Johnson is an excellent book. This accessible book offers a mini-systematics from the perspective of the incarnation, showing how the incarnation affects our understanding of God and His attributes, atonement and salvation, church and sacraments. They end with a chapter…
T he dead have gone missing from the realm of the living,” observes Candi Cann in Virtual Afterlives (xi). “They are, like their memorials, repackaged, the very disjuncture of death denies in its most crucial moment.” Death has moved from the home and family to the hospital and the funeral…
William Viestenz's By the Grace of God joins a growing list of books that, invoking Carl Schmitt and others, argues that secular politics has never been secular, but always parasitic on sacred politics. Viestenz's book is not an exercise in theory, however, but a theoretically-attentive historical study of the Spain…
God Himself is a Giver of Gifts. His eternal life is a life of give and counter-gift. Our God is the giving God. We can start with James 1:5, 17. Verse 17 tells us that every good thing and every gift is ultimately from God, who gives relentlessly, without reproaching…
Human beings are made in the image of the giving God, and this suggests that giving, reception, and return are part of the cycle of human existence as well. Man is created as a recipient of gifts; Adam’s very existence is a gift that God is not constrained to give,…
We die to sin in baptism, Paul says. Liberated from sin, we are to devote the members of our bodies to God and His righteousness. We already participate in Jesus' resurrection; His resurrection power is already at work in our bodies (Romans 6). What might that mean? What does it…
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