Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation This essay is a brief argument that the soteriology of John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion regarding union with Christ and the imputation of his righteousness is the same as…
The thoughts in this paper were largely prompted by a study of Walter E. Krebs, “The Word and the Sacraments,” Mercersburg Review (July, 1867), 366-383. The discussion in this paper presupposes my earlier studies of baptism, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future” and “Calvin on Baptism,…
Sometimes our systematic theology creates an illusion of precision. For example, we distinguish the ground and instrument of justification. Justification is grounded in Christ’s work alone, and is instrumentally received by faith alone. That makes good sense and guards us from thinking that faith itself is somehow meritorious. All the…
Whenever we participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we remember Christ and His Work for us. We remember. And in remembering, we imitate God, as His creatures made after His image. God remembers. This is mysterious to us because we usually think of remembering in the context of our…
It is standard in paedobaptist circles to argue for the baptism of infants out of the Old Covenant system. Because there is no explicit command in the New Testament, we are left to the broader principles and patterns of Scripture. In the Old Covenant, we continually find that the children…
Luther popularized the law/gospel hermeneutic. Luther argued that any demands God made upon us fell into the category of “law” and could only condemn. By contrast, anything God gave us was “gospel” and came with no strings attached. Calvin paid lip service to this law/gospel antithesis, even though it was…
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Yesterday, I summed up an article by Phillip Gray arguing that Yoder and Hauerwas end up Donatist, and also fail to account for the history of the church since they assume that the true church is pacifist. Yoder, though, isn’t as perfectionist as that. In When War Is Unjust ,…
Constantine’s legislation can be brutal and his rhetoric scathing. Not infrequently, though, the invective and brutality are directed at the powerful in defense of the weak. He decreed that the hands of greedy civil servants and judges would be removed, but what’s most interesting is the crime that provokes this…
INTRODUCTION Many of the proverbs in chapter 26 share the basic form of a simile. Sometimes, as in verse 1, the simile is explicit in the Hebrew text (“like snow in summer” is a literal translation); at other times, the simile is not explicit in Hebrew but is implied in…
Phillip Gray scores some points against Yoder and Hauerwas in a 2008 article in Politics and Religion . He suggests, for example, that the category of “Constantinian” is too clunky to capture the differences among Christian thinkers. Various positions on church and state existed in the early church, including “Tertullian/Donatist…
Some thoughts after a stimulating discussion of Ephesians 5 with my colleague Toby Sumpter. Toby pointed out that the description of marital life in Ephesians includes a number of sacrificial terms: Husbands are to imitate the Christ who “gave Himself,” who “washes” His bride, who presents her without spot or…
In an account of life under German communism, pastor Johannel Hamel noted the truth of Paul’s promise of a “way of escape”: “Time and again God creates loopholes, so to speak, open space in the midst of closed systems of unbelief and hatred of God. Hence the possibility is offered…
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