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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Baptism

Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future

OUR REFORMED HERITAGE When a Reformed Christian hears “baptismal regeneration,” what comes to mind? “Heresy,” most likely. Unfortunately, many in the Reformed community today have lost touch with some important aspects of their own heritage. If Reformed theology is going to continue reforming according to Scripture, we must recover the…

by Rich LuskMay 29, 2002
Theologia

Standing on the Promises | Faith and Assurance in the Bible

Faith and assurance are recurring subjects of controversy in Evangelical circles. We all agree that we are saved by the righteousness of Christ reckoned to us, which we receive through faith alone. Jesus lived and died and rose again as the representative of his people so that all of them…

by Mark HorneMay 24, 2002
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New Perspective on Paul

Getting Some Perspectiveon the “New Perspective”

What’s at stake (or not!) for Reformed Pastors regarding the contemporary discussion of Paul and “the works of the law”? There has been a great deal of talk lately about “the New Perspective on Paul” and the works of, among others, Ed Sanders, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright. Each…

by Mark HorneMay 24, 2002
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Theologia

Did Jesus Preach Gospel or Law to the Rich Young Ruler?

When Christ enjoins upon the young man the duty of following him (Mt. 19:23), he does not give a counsel, but a command to all in common because no one can have a hope of salvation unless he follows Christ (2 Pet. 2:21), although from a particular cause it is…

by Mark HorneMay 20, 2002
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New Perspective on Paul

A Short Note on N. T. WRIGHT and His Reformed Critics

This short paper is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis and defense of N. T. Wright, much less the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” as a whole. Indeed, Wright’s theological project has some failings and the New Perspective as a movement must be considered a mixed bag of…

by Rich LuskMay 20, 2002
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Biblical Studies

Leviticus 1:3-4, 10

Leviticus 1:3-13, Translation 3 If his Nearbringing is an Ascension from the herd, a perfect male shall he bring him near. To the forecourt of the Tent of Meeting he shall bring him near, for his acceptance before Yahweh. 4 And he shall lean his hand on the head of…

by James B. JordanAugust 5, 2001

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Exhortation

Honor was a chief value in the ancient world. For Jews, Greeks, and Romans, any violation of honor – by insult or attack – had to be avenged. Men – and this was a masculine ethic – had to defend their honor or endure a shameful reputation for weakness. Honor…

September 9, 2007

Phallic gaze

For ancient Romans, Shadi Bartsch argues in her The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire , sight was not merely passive and receptive but active. Gazing with the evil eye meant sending out “little bodies” out of the eye that “penetrate the…

September 9, 2007

More Blame-shifting

This time from Tertullian, in his treatise on the veiling of virgins. Christian women, he says, ought to “go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully…

September 9, 2007

Blame Shifting

Speaking of his sexual sin in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Reuben blames women for being too enticing: “For women are evil, my children, and by reason of their lacking authority or power over man, they scheme treacherously how they might entice him to themselves by means of their…

September 9, 2007

Means of grace

In the final “General Remark” in Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone , Kant deals with means of grace. Baptism, he claims is the “first reception of a member into a church” and therefore “is a solemnity rich in meaning which imposes grave obligations either upon the initiate, if…

September 9, 2007
History

The Shoah and Western Civilization

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz of the Institute of World Politics analyzes the role of Holocaust revisionism in the Islamic assault on the West: “The terrible, if unstated, implications of the anti-Jewish logic of the Islamists are clear. For them, the Holocaust is the secular religion of the West. The United States…

September 8, 2007

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