Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference and the Assurance of Grace Recently, there has been some controversy over the presentations of four speakers at the Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference. Accusations have been made including a denial of justification by faith alone and something close enough to “baptismal regeneration” that it…
Today, many in the Reformed world view a meritorious covenant of works as essential to a proper understanding of the gospel. These theologians believe that God set up a program in the Garden by which Adam would merit eternal life and blessing by his obedience. These same theologians usually regard…
After I graduated from college in 1989, I spent a summer in the Atlanta area in Georgia learning that I was not cut out for construction work. Then I met George Grant, one of my favorite authors. He was working for a church in South Florida in charge of their…
One meaning of “righteousness” in the Bible is moral uprightness. Perhaps a more basic meaning would be faithfulness. For example, Psalm 96.13 praises God, saying: He will judge the world in righteousness, And the peoples in faithfulness. In Hebrew poetry two lines often say the same thing using different words.…
I once saw “eschatology” defined as the study of edible French snails. But it really means the doctrine of the last things in Christian theology. In American Evangelical culture it is usually reduced to science fiction stories. But for the Apostle Paul it was actually the key to the Christian…
To understand the view of Nicholas Thomas Wright regarding Christ’s work of redemption, one must begin with the centrality of Adam to the plight of the human race. Anyone who has heard Wright’s lectures on Philippians will not be able to forget his haunting appeal to Genesis 5.3 as a…
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In the course of a review of Vittorio Montemaggi's Reading Dante's Commedia as Theology , Rowan Williams offers these observations on Inferno and Purgatorio : "There is still a tendency among not very attentive readers – not to mention people who have read almost nothing of the work but have…
"God's work in history," writes Mark Searle ( Liturgy Made Simple ), "is to gather into one the scattered children of God, to overcome divisions, to provide a place for the homeless and the lonely, to give support to those whose burdens are heavy, and to create an oasis of…
John Milbank argues in his Beyond Secular Order that " historicism cannot straightforwardly be considered as something specifically modern" (8). In fact, it originates from a Christian insight: "the sense of estranged distance from the past is initially the fruit of the Christian contrast between old and new covenants and…
Last week, I wrote a Firstthings.com column summarizing the argument of Graham Allison's Destined for War , a study of Sino-American relations organized around the concept of the "Thucydides Trap." Allison says that the ancient Greek historian claimed that Athens and Sparta went to war because Sparta was fearful of…
Christine Chaillot has a fascinating summary of the liturgical traditions of the "Ancient Oriental Churches" (Egyptian, Ethiopian, Syrian, Assyrian, Indian) in The Oxford History of Christian Worship . She quotes this Eucharistic hymn from the fifth-century Saint Yazdin (p. 164): "Strengthen, O our Lord, the hands which reach out and…
In ST I, 45, 5, Thomas Aquinas asks whether God alone creates. His sed contra cites Augustine’s de Trinitate (3.8), where Augustine says that angels cannot create anything. If angels cannot, Thomas reasons, neither can any other creature. He presents several arguments in favor of this conclusion. Creation is, Thomas…
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