Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
Showing page 168 of 309
Showing page 5 of 43
Luther writes (Commentary on Gal 2:20), “Christ and I must be joined together so that He lives in me and I in Him - and what a wonderful way of speaking that is. For because He lives in me, whatever there is in me of grace, righteousness, life, peace, salvation…
Calvin uses “regeneration” to describe the process of mortification and vivification by which the sinner is renewed in the image of God. This differs from the sense the word has in later Reformed writers. Melanchthon ( Apology for the Augsburg Confession ) uses the word in yet another sense: “we…
Robert Preus has a refreshingly unreconstructed chapter on divergent views on grace in his 1997 Justification and Rome . He asks why recent Catholic-Protestant dialogues have not addressed the issue of grace more directly, and claims that the affirmation that “justification is by grace” has quite a different meaning in…
There’s a fascinating review of Richard Rhodes’ recent biography of Audubon in the Dec 6 issue of The Weekly Standard . The reviewer has this to say about the “pervasive strangeness ” of Audubon’s art: “Audubon’s most powerful compositions (with few exceptions, such as the regal wild turkey cock and…
Martin Chemnitz provides an intriguing discussion of Abraham’s justification in his classic Examination of the Council of Trent . He pinpoints the debate between Protestant and “papalist” as follows: The issue is whether the ground of our justification is found in our post-regeneration works or in an alien righteousness of…
INTRODUCTION According to Jesus?Econsistent testimony, the Father sent Jesus into the world (John 3:34; 5:24, 30; 7:28-29; 15:21; 16:5; 17:3). Jesus didn?t come to protect us from an overbearing and hostile Father. He came in obedience to the Father?s commission. In fact, everything Jesus did manifests the Father (John 5:19-20),…
Showing page 2029 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
