Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While I think Zacharias Ursinus’ thinking would be profitable to consider, I am not recording his reflections in order for readers to come to agreement with his position as a whole. Rather, my interest is twofold. First, I think the way the Heidelberg Catechisms is used as a “proof” of…
On this question Hebrews 10 is quite clear and really needs no additional argument. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume…
Not all readers of this essay letter may be aware of it, but a tempest has been brewing in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a tempest created by the liberal party in that denomination. It came about this way. In January 2002, a Pastor’s Conference on covenant theology was…
Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years. But let me elaborate. When I became a Calvinist, back in 1970, I bought a bunch of books. Over the next few years,…
CHRIST THE PREACHER How Ephesians Shows Us Why Preaching is Essential to Salvation & Sanctification Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a…
Tracking the informal shifts in Protestant opinion regarding Baptism can be a difficult business. For example, in 1849 Anglican clergyman William Goode published his defense of Evangelicalism against the Anglo-Catholics under the title, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of…
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Richard Jenkyns reviews Susan Ruden’s The Golden Ass in the current TLS . He highlights the oddity of Apuleius’s Latin style: “He did the things that classic Latin style had eschewed. He liked loosely hanging clauses, symmetries, echoing phrases, rocking rhythms and hints of rhyme. At the start of The…
In a letter to the TLS , Ohio State’s Hannibal Hamlin celebrates Tobit’s dog: “the only domestic pet in the Bible is the dog in the Book of Tobit. His presence in the story is entirely gratuitous but also entirely positive, keeping his master, Tobit’s son Tobias, company as he…
Is the fact that God reveals Himself in human language a “paradox”? It might seem so. God is incomprehensible, and always exceeds our conceptualizations and verbalizations of Him. To attempt to render this incomprehensible God into human language, with its limits and ambiguities, seems impossible. Yet God does it. Hence,…
Lutherans aren’t supposed to have a doctrine of sanctification. Nobody told Luther ( Larger Catechism , on the Apostles Creed, 51-53.): “I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one…
Following some insights from John Paul II, I reflect on the crucial importance of the early chapters of Genesis for Christian analysis of culture at Firstthings.com .
Richard Hays gave a wonderful lecture on the creeds and the gospels at the Trinity School of Ministry conference. A few highlights: 1) From Matthew, he pointed to the fact that people bow to/worship Jesus seven times in the gospel. This might be taken as no more than civil worship,…
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