Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The debate over paedocommunion does not seem to have made much headway on either side in recent years. Certainly both sides have made a solid effort to argue for their position. But no resolution seems to be forthcoming in the near future. As a convinced paedocommunionist, I find the church’s…
How do covenant and election relate to one another? There are many issues of semantics that enter into this discussion and many issues of real substance, so we need to be careful. If we oversimplify, we can say that election relates to God’s eternal plan to save a people for…
Shortly after the Last Supper and before his final arrest, Jesus said these words to his remaining eleven faithful disciples: I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit…
Was Caleb saved by faith or works? Caleb is just one of many thousands of Hebrews who entered the Promised Land after spending years in the wilderness being led by Moses. God had delivered the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and gave them a law at Mount Sinai based on…
For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5.7) So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of…
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6.1-3). Honor your father and your mother, that your…
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Wittgenstein, Jamie Smith argues, “relativizes the claims of logic without simply rejecting them.” He rejects not logic but “logical foundationalism” that takes logic as an “ideal language” that functions as “the norm for all languages” ( Who’s Afraid of Relativism? 58). It’s possible to see logic as such an ideal…
Jamie Smith ( Who’s Afraid of Relativism? ) defends Richard Rorty against the charge that he leaves behind an antirealism that implies we cannot refer to the world, perhaps an antirealism that denies the existence of extra-linguistic things. In Smith’s summary, “realist critics confuse having a theory of reference and…
Drawing from Pindar’s seventh Olympian Ode, Barbara Kowalzig ( Singing for the Gods , 230-1) argues that the poem provides an etiology for the fireless sacrifice established for Athena at Rhodes. Why a sacrifice without fire, given that “as is nowhere clearer than in Aristophanes’ Birds, on the whole it…
Israel gets its first taste of war after the exodus when the Amalekites attack the women, children, and stragglers (Exodus 17; Deuteronomy 25:17-19). Yahweh vows to make war against those who make war on the weak, until He blots out “the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (Deuteronomy 25:19). He…
The letter to the angel of Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) is smoothly cohesive in theme. Jesus begins with a rebuke to the angel at Sardis, charging that despite his reputation for life he is in fact dead. Death and sleep are merged in verse 2, where Jesus calls the dead to…
Jesus has the key of David to open and shut (Revelation 3:8). He puts an “open door” before the angel of Philadelphia. Which way is the angel to go: In or out? The passage is typically understood with reference to mission. The angel is pictured on the inside of some…
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