Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World As I mentioned above, the history of Israel involved several centuries as a church-without-a-culture, and then several centuries as a culture-without-a-city. To be sure, there was an informal culture around the church of the Patriarchs, but the civilization of free farmers…
In the Reformation Tradition we baptize both professing believers and their children. In the case of infants it is now commonly insisted that this is done because the children are already in covenant with God. Baptism is a sign and seal of a previously existing reality. Despite the popularity of…
Concerning Sex & the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the loaf of bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many…
Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato, virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the mumbo-jumbo and — presto! — the sacraments confer…
In 27.2, the Westminster Confession says that because of the “spiritual relation” between sacraments and the things they represent, “the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” Applied to baptism, this means that when the Bible says that we are baptized into Christ (Rom. 6), it…
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In this morning?s sermon, we will be looking at the role of the Spirit in the incarnation of Jesus, in the redemption achieved by Christ, and in the life of the Trinity. One way to summarize the point is that the Spirit is the divine bond, the ?glue?Eof the Trinity.…
Vander Zee shows some chutzpah in addressing the question of Eucharistic sacrifice, and in suggesting that there are senses in which the Eucharist is properly said to be sacrificial. He offers a few quotations to show the Reformation pedigree of this perspective. The first from Calvin: “The Lord’s Supper cannot…
Leonard J. Vander Zee’s Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper is the most satisfying introduction to sacramental theology that I’ve come across. VanderZee works out a Reformed understanding of sacraments in general (focusing on the fact that sacraments are God’s action - hardly a Reformed monopoly, of course), as well…
Oswald Bayer says that for Luther faith is “divine work in us,” and that means for Luther that God “slays the old nature that belongs to the old world, the old Adam, and makes us new creatures, a new creation.” This is, in Bayers’ summary, the “decisive aspect of the…
White in fact does not even cover all the passages concerning justification within the texts that teach the doctrine. Romans 6:7 is absent from his Scripture index, and he lists the “key Pauline passages” that deal with justification as Romans 3-5; 8:29-34; Gal 1-5 ( The God Who Justifies ,…
Near the heart of the Protestant doctrine of justification (as Barth saw) is the insistence that God, not man, is Judge. Efforts at self-justification are NOT merely moralistic efforts to recommend ourselves to God (though they are that). Efforts at self-justification are also (perhaps more fundamentally) assaults on God’s Lordship;…
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