Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…
“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…
Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…
Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…
In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…
I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…
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Luther writes (Commentary on Gal 2:20), “Christ and I must be joined together so that He lives in me and I in Him - and what a wonderful way of speaking that is. For because He lives in me, whatever there is in me of grace, righteousness, life, peace, salvation…
Calvin uses “regeneration” to describe the process of mortification and vivification by which the sinner is renewed in the image of God. This differs from the sense the word has in later Reformed writers. Melanchthon ( Apology for the Augsburg Confession ) uses the word in yet another sense: “we…
Robert Preus has a refreshingly unreconstructed chapter on divergent views on grace in his 1997 Justification and Rome . He asks why recent Catholic-Protestant dialogues have not addressed the issue of grace more directly, and claims that the affirmation that “justification is by grace” has quite a different meaning in…
There’s a fascinating review of Richard Rhodes’ recent biography of Audubon in the Dec 6 issue of The Weekly Standard . The reviewer has this to say about the “pervasive strangeness ” of Audubon’s art: “Audubon’s most powerful compositions (with few exceptions, such as the regal wild turkey cock and…
Martin Chemnitz provides an intriguing discussion of Abraham’s justification in his classic Examination of the Council of Trent . He pinpoints the debate between Protestant and “papalist” as follows: The issue is whether the ground of our justification is found in our post-regeneration works or in an alien righteousness of…
INTRODUCTION According to Jesus?Econsistent testimony, the Father sent Jesus into the world (John 3:34; 5:24, 30; 7:28-29; 15:21; 16:5; 17:3). Jesus didn?t come to protect us from an overbearing and hostile Father. He came in obedience to the Father?s commission. In fact, everything Jesus did manifests the Father (John 5:19-20),…
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