Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Study in Biblical and Practical Theology Sunday School Notes / Epiphany 2004 Introductory Note: January 6 is Epiphany in the traditional church calendar. Though Epiphany is often treated as a single day, with the Sundays following counted as “Sundays after Epiphany,” we will treat Epiphany as an extended season.…
Imagine someone from another world trying to learn to live in our society according to our customs. What if someone gave him a check for a hundred dollars for his birthday–the first check he had ever seen in his life? Would he immediately understand how a check was used? Perhaps…
According to Presbyterian doctrine, as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, baptism is a baptized person’s “admission… into the visible church.” By referring to the “visible church,” the document makes clear it is referring to the present institutional Church with all her imperfections, as opposed to the future Church…
N. T. Wright claims that in the Apostle Paul’s writings “righteousness,” as it predicated of humans, denotes “covenant membership.” When he wrote this in the New Bible Dictionary edited by Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, and David Wright, no one thought this was too big a deal. However, when he…
It seems almost human nature to think that we can find something to do for God that will make Him do us favors. If we live more virtuously, or cut down on a vice or two, then God will have to reward us. But the problem with this notion is…
The First Commandment teaches us to trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. The First Commandment reads (I’m using NASB throughout): “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Obviously, trusting in someone or something else (even one’s own good works) for justification, sanctification, and eternal life”…
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J ean-Louis Chretien begins his Hand to Hand with a series of meditations on the story of Jacob wrestling with God, and artistic representations of that episode. He quotes Francois de Sales, who wrote: “Our Lord may turn us and sweep us round to the left or to the right;…
I n Hand to Hand , Jean-Louis Chretien meditates on silence in painting. He doesn't simply mean that painting is a visual rather than an audible art. Instead, he argues that paintings must not only be viewed but listened to: “To say that painting is silent is to say that…
“G iving oneself up to sleep can constitute the worst of abandonments,” writes Jean-Louis Chretien ( Hand to Hand ), “wherein we abandon another person to his solitude and his distress by withdrawing ourselves from the common world and from our community with him. Our eyelids close upon our weary…
P aul Collier devotes a long, provocative, stimulating TLS review to a sketch of a “new pragmatism.” The review doubles as an essay on the “future of capitalism.” Along the way, Collier discusses the problems of multiculturalism and gives qualified endorsement to nationalism. Multiculturalism must be “bounded,” partly because Western…
D avid I. Smith and Susan M. Felch ( Teaching and Christian Imagination ) want to rehabilitate the symbolism of “gardening” as a model of education. It does require rehabilitation, not least because of Rousseau, who wrote: “God makes all things good. . . . [but] man meddles with them…
D avid Smith and Susan Felch devote several pages of their Teaching and Christian Imagination (129–134) to a summary of John Amos Comenius's seventeenth-century treatise on education, Great Didactic . Comenius starts where humanity starts, with Eden's garden, and reflects that the garden is not only man's original location but…
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