Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While I think Zacharias Ursinus’ thinking would be profitable to consider, I am not recording his reflections in order for readers to come to agreement with his position as a whole. Rather, my interest is twofold. First, I think the way the Heidelberg Catechisms is used as a “proof” of…
On this question Hebrews 10 is quite clear and really needs no additional argument. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume…
Not all readers of this essay letter may be aware of it, but a tempest has been brewing in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a tempest created by the liberal party in that denomination. It came about this way. In January 2002, a Pastor’s Conference on covenant theology was…
Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years. But let me elaborate. When I became a Calvinist, back in 1970, I bought a bunch of books. Over the next few years,…
CHRIST THE PREACHER How Ephesians Shows Us Why Preaching is Essential to Salvation & Sanctification Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a…
Tracking the informal shifts in Protestant opinion regarding Baptism can be a difficult business. For example, in 1849 Anglican clergyman William Goode published his defense of Evangelicalism against the Anglo-Catholics under the title, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of…
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Considering the roots of contemporary "new nationalism," David Goldman contrasts the biblical roots of Anglo-American nationalism with the mythical roots of German nationalism. He suggests that Christianity faces a "conundrum," since, unlike Judaism, its spiritual and ethnic origins are not identical: Christianity "sees its spiritual origin at Golgotha but its…
John Frame is engaged in a battle over "classical theism" or "scholasticism" as articulated by James Dolezal (about whom I've written here ). Leave the terminology aside. Frame gets to the heart of the question, and gets it right: "The main content of Scripture is not that God is simple…
Isaiah reads like a “greatest hits” of Messianic prophecy. Isaiah prophesies the birth of the Messiah: "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7). "He prophesies the fact that the Messiah will…
Christian conceptions of prophecy are sometimes a mish-mash of ancient and modern conceptions. Plato thought prophecy a form of divine madness, somehow analogous to the madness of poetry and love. In the Phaedrus , Socrates says:"The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods…
At the climax of John’s prologue he announces the beginning of the gospel: The Word became flesh. John has already told us a good bit about that word. The Word was “in the beginning.” John refers to the opening verse of the Bible, where we learn that the Creator is…
"The power of procreation and the power of conviction together confer on us, thanks to marriage, the combine strength of making epochs." So writes Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 212). Marriage infuses new life into society, the possibility of peace. Without marriage, societies "cool down" into…
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