Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
John the Baptist says, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me . . . will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Mt. 3:11).” Much debate surrounds the nature of this statement and what exactly it prophesies. Sacramental, baptistic, and charismatic Christians…
First Corinthians is not considered one of the Pastoral Epistles, but there is much to learn from Paul about pastoring a congregation by the way he writes to the Corinthians. Briefly, 1 Corinthians is an exposition of the cross and resurrection. In the first fourteen chapters, Paul gives an exposition…
Fredrik Hagglund ( Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming After Exile (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament) ) argues against the common notion that Isaiah 53 is about the atoning suffering of Yahweh’s Servant. The Servant’s suffering is vicarious (i.e., he suffers for the sins of others) but it is not…
With the inheritance of Canaan and the dividing up of this priestly territory among the tribes, Israel became a microcosm of the nations of the world. This division between Israel and the nations as a substitutionary “land and sea” would prevent another global rebellion, and thus another global judgment. ((For…
One of the more revealing aspects of Paul and James’ soteriology is the different ways they both use Genesis 15:6 (“And Abraham believed God and it was counted for him as righteousness,”) as a proof text to defend their comments about the gospel. The key observation to make is that…
The disintegration of the EU is not the end of the world. It is a sign that the end of the world is anything but nigh. Western culture as we know it is dying at the hands of usurpers, traitors and prodigals. Even the worst rulers throughout Christian history at…
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W hat is the Spirit’s role in justification—the justification of Jesus and of sinners? In Protestant theology, the Spirit is typically on the “subjective” side of justification. By awakening faith, the Spirit enables sinners to receive the justifying verdict of the Father who imputes the righteousness of the Son to…
My grandson screams and runs away from a butterfly, flutterflower, wings fine as petals. The butterfly, gentlest creature, flies on, perhaps abashed, perhaps, feeling manly for having made a child cry, to pick a fight with a Monarch.
A ccording to Romans 6:7, justification is God's liberating judgment that delivers the baptized from sin, death, and from the reign of injustice. By baptism, one is transferred from the realm of Adam to that of the Last Adam. As the latter half of Romans 6 teaches, the life of…
T he closer we look at “modernity,” argue Jean and John Comaroff in Modernity and Its Malcontents , the more “rapidly [it] melts into air” (xii, riffing on Marx). This is partly because there are always, and have always been, “many modernities” (xi). Modernity “becomes especially vague when dislodged from…
J ehovah's Witnesses refuse to salute the American flag. In the case of Minersville School District v. Gibitis (1940), the Supreme Court rejected the Witness argument that being forced to salute the flag was comparable to the Nazi demand that Germans acknowledge Hitler. Felix Frankfurther dismissed the analogy: “It mocks…
M aurice Glasman ( Unnecessary Suffering , 35–36) observe that the phrase “Christian Democracy” first appeared during the 1848 Paris uprising. From Lamennais, the Christian Democrats argued for democracy as a product of Christian teaching. Democracy provided a framework for negotiating competing interests in society and for the protection of…
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