Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation This essay is a brief argument that the soteriology of John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion regarding union with Christ and the imputation of his righteousness is the same as…
The thoughts in this paper were largely prompted by a study of Walter E. Krebs, “The Word and the Sacraments,” Mercersburg Review (July, 1867), 366-383. The discussion in this paper presupposes my earlier studies of baptism, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future” and “Calvin on Baptism,…
Sometimes our systematic theology creates an illusion of precision. For example, we distinguish the ground and instrument of justification. Justification is grounded in Christ’s work alone, and is instrumentally received by faith alone. That makes good sense and guards us from thinking that faith itself is somehow meritorious. All the…
Whenever we participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we remember Christ and His Work for us. We remember. And in remembering, we imitate God, as His creatures made after His image. God remembers. This is mysterious to us because we usually think of remembering in the context of our…
It is standard in paedobaptist circles to argue for the baptism of infants out of the Old Covenant system. Because there is no explicit command in the New Testament, we are left to the broader principles and patterns of Scripture. In the Old Covenant, we continually find that the children…
Luther popularized the law/gospel hermeneutic. Luther argued that any demands God made upon us fell into the category of “law” and could only condemn. By contrast, anything God gave us was “gospel” and came with no strings attached. Calvin paid lip service to this law/gospel antithesis, even though it was…
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No, says Anatolios ( Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine , 232-3 ): “we do not find an extended and focused discussion of the likeness between the unity-in-distinction in the human realm and that in the divine realm as a central theme in Gregory’s theology, certainly not…
Lactantius devotes several sections of the Divine Institutes (6.11-12) to an analysis of Roman benefaction and to a sketch of a Christian alternative. He writes that it is “a great work of justice to protect and defend orphans and widows ho are destitute and stand in need of assistance; and…
In his brilliant Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine) , Khaled Anatolios notes that some recent theologians have criticized the Cappadocian “reduction” of the distinction of divine Persons “to the order of causality” (232). Speaking of Gregory of Nyssa in particular, Anatolios responds: “such criticism is based…
The work of Biblical Horizons has played an inestimable role in the shaping and training of the teachers and students at Geneva Academy. Understanding education as part of God’s plan to mature His people, seeing the Church at the center of God’s mission in the world, being God’s people praying…
Marc Bloch once wrote, “feudal Europe was not all feudalized in the same degree or according to the same rhythm and, above all, . . . it was nowhere feudalized completely” ( Feudal Society ). He added, “No doubt is it the fate of every system of human institutions never…
In her revisionist Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (7-8), Susan Reynolds traces common notions of feudal society, feudalism, feudal system back to sixteenth century legal historians, from where they made their way into Montesquieu and Adam Smith’s historical evolution of political economy: “In smith’s description of feudal government…
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