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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McGrath notes that Augustine interpreted the genitive in the phrase “righteousness of God” in Rom 1 objectively, so that it was understood as the righteousness that God gives in saving sinners (in “making” them righteous). Ambrosiaster, as I pointed out in an earliet post, interpreted the genitive subjectively - the…
Ambrosiaster writes, “Iustitia est Dei, quia quod promisit dedit, ideo credens hoc esse se consecutum quod promiserat Deus per prophetas suos, iustum Deum probat et testis est iustitiae eius” (PL, 17.56b). McGrath explains: “God, having promised to give salvation, subsequently gives it, and as a result is deemed to be…
Nevin wrote: “There is more a great deal in Christianity, I firmly believe, more in the idea of hte Holy Catholic Church, than has yet been attained, either in the way of knowledge or in the way of life, by the Protestant Reformation.”
There was a consensus among the theologians of Trent, McGrath argues, that justification was “factitive,” a view that excluded that “a sinner may be justified solely as a matter of reputation or imputation, while remaining a sinner in fact.” But of course that raises the question, What exactly is a…
McGrath traces the odd development in Lutheran Orthodoxy of the notion that regeneration and faith precede justification in such a way that “where Luther had understood justification to concern the unbelieving sinner, orthodoxy revised this view, referring justification to the believing sinner.” This takes Lutheran Orthodoxy back in the direction…
McGrath notes, “While justification was universally understood to involve the regeneration of humanity, the opinion that an ontological change is thereby effected within humans is particularly associated with the period of High Scholasticism and the development of the concept of created grace. The earlier medieval theologians expressed the change effected…
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