Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“And it shall be in those days when you are multiplied and increased in the land,” declares the Lord, “they shall say no more, ‘The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.’ And it shall not come to mind, nor shall they remember it, nor shall they miss it, nor…
Elsewhere, I have argued that there is grace in the so-called covenant of works (see, e.g., my colloquium essay, “A Response to ‘The Biblical Plan of Salvation,’” in The Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Cons , edited by Calvin Beisner (pages 118-148). It may be equally surprising to find justice…
Years ago, as a layman, I had the privilege of attending a Bible study led by a gifted teacher. His story was interesting: back when he was a student he had been severely sanctioned for affirming that one must repent in order to be saved, that one must trust Jesus…
Believing that God really exists Defining “faith” is sometimes made too complicated. The theologian, Louis Berkhof, for example, distinguishes “faith in general” from “faith in the religious sense and particularly saving faith.” Berkhof’s core definition of saving faith is not so bad. He says that it is “a certain conviction,…
It is generally acknowledged that when Paul wrote letters to churches, he expected his letters to be read in the worship service to the congregation. It is interesting, then, that when Paul wrote letters to a congregation he could feel free to address children and tell them to obey their…
Book 4 of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is a classic work of ecclesiology. This book is the longest section of the Institutes , showing Calvin’s deep interest in and love for the church. Among its many salutary features is a full scale exposition of those ecclesiastical leaders Calvin…
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Materialism is "good news," according to Stephen Greenblatt, since it shows us the truth of "human insignificance" and dispels enchantment. We're liberated from sacred boundaries to do what we like. Rusty Reno, who quotes this from Greenblatt ( Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society , 148) considers this a…
Paul Gottfried ( After Liberalism ) points out that liberalism doesn’t mean one thing. It “has not been allowed to keep any fixed and specific meaning. It has signified dramatically different and even opposed things at different times and places in the course of this century, from a defense of…
In his Lectures on Godmanhood , Vladimir Solovyev isolated the inner contradiction of 19th-century conceptions of human nature. On the one hand, "contemporary man is aware that he is internally free, deems himself to be higher than any external principle independent of him, asserts himself as the center of everything."…
Many commentators have noted the similarities between Josiah's death (2 Chronicles 35) and that of Ahab (2 Chronicles 18). Christine Mitchell argues, however, that commentators often miss the irony of the Chronicler's account, and some of the other precedents for Josiah's death. One irony has to do with the location…
Robert Heimburger's God and the Illegal Alien is a careful, theologically-informed treatment of American immigration law. He provides detailed overviews of the development of immigration law, including the origins of the concept of a legal "alien," sketches a theology of politics with the help of "Barth's biblical theology of the…
In his monograph on Aliens in Medieval Law , Keechang Kim notes that the distinction of citizen and "alien" replaced the earlier binary of "free" and "unfree" during the later middle ages. He cites John Fortescue's De laudibus legum Anglie (c. 1468-70), which argued that ""Hard and unjust (crudelis), we…
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