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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Paul’s discussion of the future of Israel assumes Jesus’ predictions about the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. This is what he’s talking about when he talks about “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” and when he quotes from Hosea and Isaiah in 9:25-29. In 9:27, the “remnant” does…
INTRODUCTION As a church, we believe that before the foundation of the world God ordained whatever happens in the world, down to the slightest detail. But this seems to be contrary to some explicit statements of Scripture, which talk about God changing His plans. And it seems to nullify the…
In a 1975 article in JBL, one Bruce Dahlberg suggests that the background to Matthew 16:13-23 is less Isaiah 22 (the “key” of Eliakim’s shoulder) than Jeremiah 1, the call of the prophet. Some of his arguments rely on extrabiblical associations of keys with the temple (this has a biblical…
In his study of Matthew’s five-discourse structure, BW Bacon mentions commentators who connect the miracles of Matt 8-9 with the ancient idea that there were 10 plagues, 10 miracles by the sea, and 10 miracles in the sanctuary. His main reasin for disputing this interpretation is that the sequence, in…
Dale Allison notes that Matthew “stipulates that it be interpreted in the context of other texts. This means that it is, in a fundamental sense, an incomplete utterance, a book full of holes. Readers must make present what is absent; they must become actively engaged and bring to the gospel…
The Jewish scholar GC Montefiore wrote: “What one would have wished to find in the life-story of Jesus would be one single incident in which Jesus actually performed a loving deed to one of his Rabbinic antagonists or enemies. That would have been worth all the injunctions of the Sermon…
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