Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation This essay is a brief argument that the soteriology of John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion regarding union with Christ and the imputation of his righteousness is the same as…
The thoughts in this paper were largely prompted by a study of Walter E. Krebs, “The Word and the Sacraments,” Mercersburg Review (July, 1867), 366-383. The discussion in this paper presupposes my earlier studies of baptism, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future” and “Calvin on Baptism,…
Sometimes our systematic theology creates an illusion of precision. For example, we distinguish the ground and instrument of justification. Justification is grounded in Christ’s work alone, and is instrumentally received by faith alone. That makes good sense and guards us from thinking that faith itself is somehow meritorious. All the…
Whenever we participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we remember Christ and His Work for us. We remember. And in remembering, we imitate God, as His creatures made after His image. God remembers. This is mysterious to us because we usually think of remembering in the context of our…
It is standard in paedobaptist circles to argue for the baptism of infants out of the Old Covenant system. Because there is no explicit command in the New Testament, we are left to the broader principles and patterns of Scripture. In the Old Covenant, we continually find that the children…
Luther popularized the law/gospel hermeneutic. Luther argued that any demands God made upon us fell into the category of “law” and could only condemn. By contrast, anything God gave us was “gospel” and came with no strings attached. Calvin paid lip service to this law/gospel antithesis, even though it was…
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In his The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation , David Chilton suggests that the dragon and two beasts of Revelation 12-13 constitute a demonic parody of of a modified Trinity. The Father is imaged by the dragon, the Son by the sea beast, and the…
Near the beginning of his The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science , EA Burtt contrasts medieval with modern science. The difference is mainly to do with their different assessments of the place of man in nature. For medieval thinkers nature was “subservient to man’s knowledge, purpose, and destiny” (24). This…
In his A defence of free-thinking in mathematics. In answer to a pamphlet of Philalethes Cantabrigiensis, intituled, Geometry no friend to infidelity , George Berkeley challenges what he considers the idolatry of Isaac Newton that he finds in some of his contemporaries. He admires Newton’s genius, but refuses to bow.…
Ephraim Radner points out in A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church that early Christian discussions of unity “were often framed precisely in terms of the activities that marked a common life together” (171). Radner elaborates: “So Basil will speak of unity in terms of mutual correction…
Owen ( The Death of Death in the Death of Christ ) spends a chapter rebutting the claims of Thomas More’s The Universality of God’s Free Grace . The response engages More at times, but frequently the two are simply moving past one another. More writes, “it is certainly a…
Owen ( The Death of Death in the Death of Christ ) also responds to the use of 2 Peter 2:1 as a text in favor of universal atonement. Peter writes of false teachers who “deny the Lord who bought them.” This seems straightforward enough, but Owen sees only obscurities:…
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