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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Israel’s calling was to be the focal point of Yahweh’s battle against sin. This is evident from the context of Abraham’s call in Gen. 12. Yahweh promised earlier He would no longer flood the earth. After Babel the nations have been scattered and He will no longer deal with them…
As posed by what Jurgen Moltmann has called “protest atheism,” the problem of evil is usually framed as a contradiction within theism, particularly biblical theism. Evil exists: God is either good but impotent to stop evil, or He is omnipotent but malign, such that evil expresses some aspect of his…
Bach’s little Minuet in G ends, not surprisingly, on G, while the bass plays a descending series of notes that are part of the G-major chord: G, D, and G. With the G, and the fragments of the chord, the Minuet comes to rest. The next to last note in…
Someone has no doubt said this before; I might have said it before: The destruction of Egyptians in the Red Sea is an application of the lex talionis. Egypt killed the children of Israel in the Nile, which turned red with their blood; so Yahweh put Pharaoh and his best…
Kregel has just released John Day’s Crying For Justice , a study of the imprecatory Psalms by a PCA minister in Washington state. It’s the most careful, balanced, and biblical treatment of the subject I’ve seen. Day addresses all the current views on imprecations, the objections lodged against them, and…
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