Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When someone expounds the way of salvation found in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms and in the easily-accessible writings of the Reformed heritage, he often finds him embroiled in a debates about the covenant of works and the Mosaic Covenant. One is “proven” to be aberrant by allegations that one…
The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of course, because it means that all the…
One of the odd features of Michael Horton’s version of Covenant theology is his interpretation of the covenant God made with Abraham 1 in Genesis 15. According to Horton, The very way in which God made the covenant with Abraham (putting him to sleep; walking through the torn animals by…
What was I trying to do, when I wrote my book on Mark’s Gospel ? Fundamentally, I wanted a book that would change readers by making them better readers of the Gospel of Mark. My ideal reader is not someone who goes to the book to use as a resource…
Why do we need sacraments? According to the Westminster Confession, sacraments were instituted by Christ “to confirm our interest in him” (27.1), “to strengthen and increase” the “faith” of those within the Covenant of Grace and “to distinguish them from those that are without” that covenant (Westminster Larger Catechism, #162).…
In Isaiah 5:1-7, we have a typical covenant lawsuit, in which the Lord accuses his people of rejecting his grace and mercy. It is not my intention here to exegete the entire passage, or to look at the way the vineyard image used here serves as a metaphor in other…
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INTRODUCTION John’s readers are in danger of being misled, and John writes to warn them about false teachers and deceivers. John is confident that his “little children” will be delivered from the deceivers because they have an “anointing” from God. THE TEXT “Little children, it is the last hour; and…
Christopher Insole wants theologians who attack “liberalism” to be more careful about what they’re attacking. He favorably cites Robert Song, who distinguishes the constitutional liberalism of Locke and Kant from the laissez-faire liberalism of Hayek from the welfare liberalism of Hobhouse. Fair enough. But Insole’s own definition of liberalism seems…
1 John 2:15-16: Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. When John talks about “the world,” he’s talking, as we’ve seen, about a cultural, social, and political system organized in hostility or…
Cultures have traditionally been rivers (Z. Bauman). The current carries everyone along in the same direction, whether or not they like where they’re going. When someone asks, “Why are we going this way?” it’s a sufficient answer to say, “We always have.” The only way to go a different direction…
Modernity arose to tame the chaos and carnage of 16th and 17th-century European wars. To form a Europe reduced to formlessness, modern thinkers and politicians drew boundaries - the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic established in the Peace of Westphalia and the boundaries between religion and political life, among others.…
Katherine Newey suggests that “a class-based divide between popular culture and literary or ‘high,’ remaining to this day, emerged in debates over the reform of the theatre [in the 19th century]. Much of what still endures of the concept of ‘legitimate’ theatre in the early twenty-first century was formed out…
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