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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Few people today work at the same job throughout their 40 or so years of working life, and many economists and sociologists have pondered the effects of this development. No doubt there is something lost. But there is also gain. Rosenstock-Huessy suggests that, due to technical efficiencies, doctors can stuff…
When the young Yves Congar visited Lutheran theologians and pastors in Germany in 1930, he learned that Lutheran perceptions of Catholicism were largely shaped by Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, of which Congar had never heard. Today, it would be impossible for a sophisticated theologian like Congar to reach his mid-20s without…
Menand offers a useful summary of Peirce’s views on signs, in a way that highlights both similarities and differences with Derrida. Peirce taught a notion of differance : “The meaning of a representation,” he wrote, “can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself…
In his very readable The Metaphysical Club (2001), Louis Menand gives a number of pithy summaries of pragmatism, its sources, its varieties, and its fundamental beliefs. The common attitude or idea among pragmatists has been “an idea about ideas.” Whatever their differences, pragmatists “all believed that ideas are not ‘out…
Everyone lives between times, and is the intersection of past and future. Everyone is always already taught, and always anticipating or actually teaching and ruling. Rosenstock-Huessy writes, “‘He’ never exists, but is always between two times, two ages, as son and father, layman and expert, the end of one era…
No generation ought to be determined by the spirit of the sons. As a matter of simple fact, the world is never occupied by a single generation. For a generation to be healthy, the spirit of the sons must mingle with the spirit of the fathers. The Spirit must proceed…
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