Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When someone expounds the way of salvation found in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms and in the easily-accessible writings of the Reformed heritage, he often finds him embroiled in a debates about the covenant of works and the Mosaic Covenant. One is “proven” to be aberrant by allegations that one…
The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of course, because it means that all the…
One of the odd features of Michael Horton’s version of Covenant theology is his interpretation of the covenant God made with Abraham 1 in Genesis 15. According to Horton, The very way in which God made the covenant with Abraham (putting him to sleep; walking through the torn animals by…
What was I trying to do, when I wrote my book on Mark’s Gospel ? Fundamentally, I wanted a book that would change readers by making them better readers of the Gospel of Mark. My ideal reader is not someone who goes to the book to use as a resource…
Why do we need sacraments? According to the Westminster Confession, sacraments were instituted by Christ “to confirm our interest in him” (27.1), “to strengthen and increase” the “faith” of those within the Covenant of Grace and “to distinguish them from those that are without” that covenant (Westminster Larger Catechism, #162).…
In Isaiah 5:1-7, we have a typical covenant lawsuit, in which the Lord accuses his people of rejecting his grace and mercy. It is not my intention here to exegete the entire passage, or to look at the way the vineyard image used here serves as a metaphor in other…
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P aul begins his first letter to the Corinthians with a scathing denunciation of Corinthian factionalism. He poses several rhetorical questions: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? And he brings us baptism: Into whose name were you baptized? Paul's? Peter's? Calvin's? Luther's? Baptism is a naming ceremony, and…
I t appears that the biblical text was composed according to preconceived models and patterns shaped by certain numbers that regulate the amount of words, sentences, and verses,” writes CJ Labuschagne in his Numerical Secrets of the Bible (1). Like music, “literary texts in biblical antiquity were composed and structurally…
O ne of the faults of discourses, argues Hobbes ( Leviathan , 1.8), occurs when “men speak such words as, put together, have in them no signification at all.” The words are spoken for different reasons: They “are fallen upon, by some, through misunderstanding of the words they have received…
M onastic flight, Rowan Williams emphasizes ( Silence and Honey Cakes ), wasn't “running away from responsibility or from relationships.” Rather, it is “about denying yourself the luxury of solving your problems by running away literally or physically from them . . . and about taking responsibility for your sins”…
T he problem with sacramental theology is that it's sacramental theology. That is, the problem is the abstraction of certain events, acts, objects, things from their surroundings and subjected to detailed scrutiny. To do sacramental theology, you have to isolate bread and wine from the sequence of liturgical actions that…
T M Luhrmann ( When God Talks Back ) wants to explain believers to contemporary unbelievers. How can orthodox believers withstand the pressures of the secular world and have what they can describe as a personal relationship with God? Luhrmann emphasizes that this experience doesn't come overnight: “Skeptics sometimes imagine…
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