Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Camping’s Attempted Substantiation Camping attempts to justify his hypothesis with several lines of argument, all of which are erroneous. 1. Gaps in Genealogies He first mentions the fact that in some of the "begatitudes" of the Bible, generations are left out for some reason or other. Matthew 1:8 and 11,…
I am often asked why I am not an Episcopalian, since I like liturgy so much. My answer is that if I had a call to serve in Episcopal circles, I would certainly entertain it. When I have looked into such groups as the Reformed Episcopal Church, however, I have…
For Part 1, click HERE . Now, what does this mean? Are we to believe that Adam was supposed to earn "merits" before God apart from faith ? Surely nobody wants to maintain this. The traditional explainers of the covenant of works always try to nuance their theology so as…
This issue of Biblical Chronology begins a second series of studies. The first series, Vols. I:1–V:4, concerned the chronology of the Bible itself. We saw, first, that the Bible is indeed concerned with chronology, contains much chronological information, and that the chronology in the Bible is complete from creation to…
David A. Weir, The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). A thorough reevaluation of the federal theology is desperately needed today. John Murray, in his introduction to The Covenant of Grace (1953) appropriately reminds us that it is of the essence…
An "essay" is a foray into a topic. It is not the last word. I hope that this essay or foray is a helpful word. This essay is designed as brief and suggestive. The doctrine of the covenant of works finds expression in the Westminster Standards, where it is also…
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Rebutting Jonathan Last’s portrait of Batman as the comic book answer to liberalism, Travis Smith (writing at the Weekly Standard site) argues that Spiderman is the better antidote to modernity: “The essential difference between Spider-Man and Batman can be detected in their styles: Spidey’s banter is full of quips and…
In his contribution to Gifts and Interests (Morality and the Meaning of Life) , Jacques Godbout suggests that the freedoms of modernity are “founded on the immediate and permanent liquidation of debt.” In the market, all debts are immediately canceled: You give me goods over the counter, I give you…
So, the prose is a overwrought, but Robert Raynolds vividly captures the giftiness of gratitude in a couple of passages in his 1961 prose-poem, In Praise of Gratitude . Returning from a visit to Mexico as a young man, he pays a visit to the woman who will become his…
In his L’ingratitude: Conversation sur notre temps (French Edition) , Alain Finkielkraut cites Roland Barthes’s inaugural lecture at the College of France: “Language, as performance of the language system, is neither reactionary nor progressive. It is simply fascist: for fascism is not the prohibition of saying things but the obligation…
Protestants are often charged with unleashing the social solvents of individualism on the world. The Reformers didn’t see things that way. In fact, they claimed to be standing for community against the corrosive individualism of the medieval Mass. Hence Calvin writes ( Institutes 4.18.7). He begins with “The Supper itself…
In a 2007 article in the Scottish Journal of Theology , Piotr Malysz challenges William Cavanaugh’s reading of Luther’s eucharistic theology. According to Cavanaugh, Luther’s theology created a dualism between “exchange” and “gift,” and turned the latter into a supernatural “intrusion” into the transactionist patterns of normal social life. Malysz…
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