Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Rounding Out the Traditional Doctrine of Justification Justification and the Church The traditional Protestant doctrine of justification fails to fully hold together the soteriological (forgiveness of sins) and the ecclesiological (covenant membership). This is part of a larger problem, of course, namely, the dichotomizing of church and salvation. Biblically and…
John Piper’s book, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002) is, from any perspective, a passionate work. Nevertheless, I find I need to disagree with parts of it. The reason I do this is not because John Piper’s book does…
What follows is a handout for a Sunday School class I have taught recently at my church . Presbyterian doctrine teaches what the Bible says about God sovereign control over history and his unconditional choice (election) to bring some people to everlasting glory while allowing others to remain in unbelief…
“Covenantal Nomism” sounds like a description of tiny contract-loving creatures who live underground. But it is actually a recent term used to describe the pattern of religious belief and practice in first-century Palestinian Judaism. The idea is that God graciously establishes a structured relationship based on promises, a “covenant,” with…
What follows deals primarily with two essays, one by Dr. Douglas Kelly and the other by The Rev. Richard Phillips . My reason for writing this essay is that many people are confidently saying things about N. T. Wright that I believe are contrary to fact. I choose Dr. Kelly…
The Bible is often treated as a book of rules with directions for living. To some extent, that is true; but it is neither the whole truth nor the most important truth about the book. Ultimately, the Bible is a story about God and man and their reconciliation in Christ.…
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Prior to the 18th century, writes Mark Evan Bonds, instrumental music was considered inferior to music that accompanied words ( Wordless Rhetoric ). According to the artistic theory developed by Johann Georg Sulzer, “instrumental music . . . can be pleasing and at times moving, but its ‘meaning' is relatively…
Paul's speech on the Areopagus is the second of three programmatic speeches in Acts. Robert Tannehill notes ( The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts ) that they trace the progression of Paul's mission: “Careful planning is indicated by the fact that we have three different types of speeches addressed to three…
In his now-classic Sources of the Self (143-4), Charles Taylor observes that Descartes is “in many ways profoundly Augustinian: the emphasis on radical reflexivity, the importance of the cogito, the central role of a proof of God's existence which starts from ‘within,' from features of my own ideas, instead of…
Mark Evan Bonds's Absolute Music is a study of 19th-century debates concerning the purity or absoluteness of music, the question of the possibility and/or propriety of segregating music from the rest of the world, music as a sheer aesthetic experience, an experience of pure beauty or simple form. It's a…
Robert Tannehill points out in the second volume of his Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts that Acts 16-19 depicts a recurring “public accusation type-scene.” Prior to chapter 16, the public accusations against Paul and his associates are not highlighted. After chapter 16, they are. “In 16:20-21 Romans accuse the mission of…
Matthew B. Crawford argues in The World Beyond Your Head that things discipline our attention and thus make genuine knowledge of the world possible: “ things that can serve as a kind of authority for us, by way of structuring our attention. The design of things—for example, cars and children’s…
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