Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When someone expounds the way of salvation found in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms and in the easily-accessible writings of the Reformed heritage, he often finds him embroiled in a debates about the covenant of works and the Mosaic Covenant. One is “proven” to be aberrant by allegations that one…
The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of course, because it means that all the…
One of the odd features of Michael Horton’s version of Covenant theology is his interpretation of the covenant God made with Abraham 1 in Genesis 15. According to Horton, The very way in which God made the covenant with Abraham (putting him to sleep; walking through the torn animals by…
What was I trying to do, when I wrote my book on Mark’s Gospel ? Fundamentally, I wanted a book that would change readers by making them better readers of the Gospel of Mark. My ideal reader is not someone who goes to the book to use as a resource…
Why do we need sacraments? According to the Westminster Confession, sacraments were instituted by Christ “to confirm our interest in him” (27.1), “to strengthen and increase” the “faith” of those within the Covenant of Grace and “to distinguish them from those that are without” that covenant (Westminster Larger Catechism, #162).…
In Isaiah 5:1-7, we have a typical covenant lawsuit, in which the Lord accuses his people of rejecting his grace and mercy. It is not my intention here to exegete the entire passage, or to look at the way the vineyard image used here serves as a metaphor in other…
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O’Regan ( Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic , 113-4) deftly captures the limits and use of Derrida. Limits first, and there are severe: Derrida is not “adequate for Christian theology,” he argues, because “as theo -logy, there is presumtively a reality whose very nature it seems it to self-disclose,…
Christian reception of the work of Walter Benjamin is often set in the context of Christian reception of Jewish messianism or Jewish apocalyptic. In a brilliant summary of Benjamin, Cyril O’Regan ( Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic , 61-8) contests this characterization. Despite Benjamin’s claim that he is settled…
The Spirit is upon the Servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 61:1), and where the Spirit is, there is new creation (cf. Genesis 1:2). The mission of the Servant is fittingly described in a complex of seven infinitive clauses (vv. 1-3): A) Yahweh anointed Me 1) to proclaim good news to the…
The Servant of Yahweh is anointed to proclaim the “acceptable year of Yahweh” and the “day of vengeance of our God” and to comfort the mourners (Isaiah 61:2). These are not opposites. They proclaim the same fact from different angles, and the connection is underscored by a Hebrew play on…
The word “liberty” ( deror ) is rarely used in the Hebrew Bible, and the terms for its use are set by Leviticus 25, the laws of Jubilee. There, liberty includes the freeing of slaves, as whenZedekiah proclaims liberty to slaves (Jeremiah 34:8-16). But the specific liberty that is proclaimed…
Some months ago, I wrote a brief piece on the “tragedy” of conversion .I used the word “tragedy” in the sense I develop in Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature . The word describes a conception of history and metaphysics in which the original is by definition…
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