Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One of the major themes of the book of Acts is that Christ’s servants follow in His footsteps. For instance, if we compare the lives of Jesus and Paul, we find that each engaged in several years of travelling and preaching. Each set his face toward Jerusalem. In each case…
(This continues a discussion of the Biblical and Assyrian chronologies, begun in earlier posts. You can click on the category, "Biblical Chronology," to see the previous posts. Was Ahab at Qarqar? Allis writes: "According to his Monolith Inscription, Shalmaneser III, in his sixth year (854 B.C.) made an expedition to…
I am not infrequently asked for advice on how to implement the kinds of things I’ve discussed in Rite Reasons and in my book The Sociology of the Church. To that end I’m providing in this essay some nuts and bolts that grow out of more than ten years of…
The first commandment given in the Levitical sacrificial legislation has to do with the animals appropriate to sacrifice: "When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of cattle ( behemah ), from the herd or the flock" (Lev. 1:2). Cattle alone were…
In the first week of November, the voters of the state of Washington were asked to approve or disapprove physician-assisted suicide. This has led to a good deal of comment on the issue of euthanasia in the press, and provokes the following reflections. 1. From a social policy standpoint, the…
We come this month to one of the most pernicious problems in the reconstruction of Ancient Near Eastern chronology, the problem of the Assyrian King Lists. We cannot proceed further with our survey of the chronology of the kings of Israel until we remove this roadblock from our path. We…
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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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