Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While I think Zacharias Ursinus’ thinking would be profitable to consider, I am not recording his reflections in order for readers to come to agreement with his position as a whole. Rather, my interest is twofold. First, I think the way the Heidelberg Catechisms is used as a “proof” of…
On this question Hebrews 10 is quite clear and really needs no additional argument. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume…
Not all readers of this essay letter may be aware of it, but a tempest has been brewing in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a tempest created by the liberal party in that denomination. It came about this way. In January 2002, a Pastor’s Conference on covenant theology was…
Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years. But let me elaborate. When I became a Calvinist, back in 1970, I bought a bunch of books. Over the next few years,…
CHRIST THE PREACHER How Ephesians Shows Us Why Preaching is Essential to Salvation & Sanctification Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a…
Tracking the informal shifts in Protestant opinion regarding Baptism can be a difficult business. For example, in 1849 Anglican clergyman William Goode published his defense of Evangelicalism against the Anglo-Catholics under the title, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of…
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Jerusalem is named 13x in Matthew’s gospel, the last of them in 23:37 where the name is doubled in Jesus’ lament (the city’s name is spelled differently in 23:37). Both at the beginning and end, Jerusalem is troubled by the coming of Jesus: All Jerusalem is upset with Herod at…
Matthew mentions Sodom three times - in 10:15 and twice in 11:23-24. In the second, He says that the cities that have refused to repent when He did miracles will be judged more harshly than Sodom; in the first, He says that those who reject His disciples will be subject…
James Wood is always illuminating, but never more so than when he’s giving a book a sharply negative review, as he does with Updike’s recent Terrorist (reviewed in TNR July 3). My favorite line: “When Ahmad [the terrorist of the title] speaks, he sounds like V. S. Naipaul; but when…
James Wood is always illuminating, but never more so than when he’s giving a book a sharply negative review, as he does with Updike’s recent Terrorist (reviewed in TNR July 3). My favorite line: “When Ahmad [the terrorist of the title] speaks, he sounds like V. S. Naipaul; but when…
It’s a commonplace of liberal theology that Jesus is a great teacher, but no more. Jesus is certainly a teacher in Matthew’s gospel, but David Bauer points out that the only people who call him rabbi are strangers or opponents (8:19; 12:38). Oh, yes, and Judas (26:25, 49). Disciples, those…
Louis Dupre writes, “Shakespeare’s comedies, the accomplished masterpieces of this playful oscillation [between appearance and reality], leave the viewer utterly confused about what must count as real and what as illusion. The theatre here parodies a real-life fear of deception concerning the true nature of the outside world. The constantly…
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