Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary In what follows, I will consider the “year-stamps” employed in Scripture, i.e., statements of the form, “Such-and-such an event took place in the Xth year of Y.” In the process, I will suggest some ways in which the Biblical narrative might relate to events in the extra-Biblical world, though…
In the first essay on the parable of the Prodigal Son, I suggested that the problems commentators and others encounter in interpreting Jesus three-part parable are not accidental. These are not just problems in our ignorance of cultural background. They are intentional features of the stories —stories designed to poke…
The story of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the most well-known story in the Bible. As others have observed, it may also be one of the most misunderstood. In two short essays, I will point out features of this story that are commonly neglected, aspects of Jesus’ parable that might…
The parable of Lazarus and the nameless rich man is not an independent story. It is part of a long context that begins in Luke 15:1, where Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners and the scribes and Pharisees grumble. In response to their hardheartedness, Jesus tells a three-part…
The Bible is written so that even when a reader cannot pick up on what might be deeper or more detailed aspects of a text, there is virtually always a message to be heard. In the ancient world, where the “reader” of Scripture would likely be a church official facing…
The distinction between garden (or vineyard) and field begins in Genesis 2. This relates to the ordering of the formless world. Plants of the field are contrasted with the garden planted by God in Genesis 2:5&8. Later on, under the Old Covenant the Israelites will be required to keep their…
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INTRODUCTION Once again Matthew records a series of three miracles, then a scene of a call to discipleship, and finally a description of the nature of Jesus’ ministry. The Jews begin to criticize Jesus, while the disciples wonder whom they are following. THE TEXT “Now when He got into a…
Matthew 8:15: And Jesus touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she arose and waited on Him. Our sermon text contains a clear Eucharistic prophecy. When Jesus sees the faith of the centurion, He marvels, and He observes that this is a sign of a trend. Gentiles like…
Our sermon text this morning begins a section of Matthew in which Jesus performs a series of miracles. He cleanses a leper, makes paralytics mobile, calms storms, gives sight to the blind and speech to the dumb. He casts out demons and raises the dead. Everywhere Jesus goes, life comes…
Jonathan Moore’s book focuses on John Preston, but he also deals with other English theologians who taught some form of universal atonement theology, including Ussher and John Davenant, the latter one of the English delegates to Dort. Preston combined particularist and universalist by distinguishing sharply between the scope of Christ’s…
From Moore’s book again, Perkins writing: “the raising up of Christ is . . . his actuall absolution from their sins, for whom he died; for even as the Father by delivering Christ to death, did in very deede condemne their sinnes imputed unto Christ, for whome he died; so…
William Perkins has been accused of being “addicted to adding the qualifying phrase ‘for the elect’ to universalist Biblical statements.” In his recent book on John Preston and English Hypothetical Universalism (Eerdmans), Jonathan Moore argues that this assessment is exaggerated. Moore lays out Perkins’s views on definite atonement thoroughly, yet…
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