Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Study in Biblical and Practical Theology Sunday School Notes / Epiphany 2004 Introductory Note: January 6 is Epiphany in the traditional church calendar. Though Epiphany is often treated as a single day, with the Sundays following counted as “Sundays after Epiphany,” we will treat Epiphany as an extended season.…
Imagine someone from another world trying to learn to live in our society according to our customs. What if someone gave him a check for a hundred dollars for his birthday–the first check he had ever seen in his life? Would he immediately understand how a check was used? Perhaps…
According to Presbyterian doctrine, as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, baptism is a baptized person’s “admission… into the visible church.” By referring to the “visible church,” the document makes clear it is referring to the present institutional Church with all her imperfections, as opposed to the future Church…
N. T. Wright claims that in the Apostle Paul’s writings “righteousness,” as it predicated of humans, denotes “covenant membership.” When he wrote this in the New Bible Dictionary edited by Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, and David Wright, no one thought this was too big a deal. However, when he…
It seems almost human nature to think that we can find something to do for God that will make Him do us favors. If we live more virtuously, or cut down on a vice or two, then God will have to reward us. But the problem with this notion is…
The First Commandment teaches us to trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. The First Commandment reads (I’m using NASB throughout): “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Obviously, trusting in someone or something else (even one’s own good works) for justification, sanctification, and eternal life”…
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Book 6 of Bonaventure’s The Soul’s Journey into God, is about the Trinity. The premise is that good is essentially “self-diffusive,” and thus the highest good must be “most self-diffusive.” This highest self-diffusion is not possible unless it is “actual and intrinsic, substantial and hypostatic, natural and voluntary, free and…
According to Richard of St. Victory ( On the Trinity ), God is the fullness and perfection of all goodness. Plotinus said as much. But then Richard adds that nothing is better than charity, something that Plotinus does not say. For Richard, charity cannot be a solitary enterprise; charity must…
David Chilton points out ( Days of Vengeance , 196-7) points out that seven features of the creation are rendered useless when the sixth seal is opened (Revelation 6:12-14): 1. Earth quakes. 2. The sun turns black. 3. The moon turns to blood. 4. Stars fall from heaven. 5. Heaven…
In the course of her lively challenge to goddess-obsessions among scholars ( In the Wake of the Goddess ), Tikva Frymer-Kensky claims that ancient Israel embodied a proto-feminist sexual polity: “There i nothing disinctively ‘female’ about the way women are portrayed in the Bible, nothing particularly feminine about either their…
When the Lamb opens the sixth seal, the earth and sky collapse (Revelation 6:12-17). The earth shakes, the sky grows dark, the world begins to fall apart. Like Egypt in the time of Moses, the Lamb strikes the earth with plagues and, like the Egyptians, the people of the land…
Michael Solana thinks science fiction is doing us a disservice. Nighmarish predictions of the future aren’t new, but Solana thinks that they’ve become pervasive. A sub-sub-genre has taken over the field, and occupied our imagination. Solana writes, “dystopia has appeared in science fiction from the genre’s inception, but the past…
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