Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Misunderstanding “Galatianism” has caused several problems in the Reformed church. Because circumcision is at issue in the Galatian epistle, some have fallen into thinking that ritual per se, rather than anything uniquely Mosaic or Jewish, is the object of Paul’s critique. Likewise, his polemic against “works of the law” is…
Many texts in the NT become more perspicuous if we keep in mind the possibility — and indeed ubiquity — of Gentile God-fearers in the Old Covenant. After the special covenant with Israel is set up, Gentiles are not altogether excluded from the hope of salvation. Israel’s special status in…
I was once trying to get a sermon out of Ephesians 1.12-14 and it seemed obvious that I should look for two parallel statements both ending with the phrase, “to the praise of his glory.” Paul here begins talking about two groups of people (“you” and “we”), and he later…
WHY A DENOMINATION WITH SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN ROOTS SHOULD CAREFULLY CONSIDER THE “NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL” In my denomination, the PCA, we are continually haunted by the sins of our racist Southern past. It has become an annual rite at General Assembly for the issue to be addressed one way or…
Recent debates over whether or not, “justification is central” to Paul’s theology have reminded me of a sermon I once heard by a Presbyterian seminary student. This African American student challenged his audience on the sin of racism and the ways it might manifest itself among us. Like any good…
In Charles Hodge’s 1853 article, “Idea of the Church,” his stated aim is to analyze the idea of the Church proposed in the Apostles’ Creed, in which, “the Church is declared to be “the Communion of the Saints.” He writes: The conception of the Church as the communion of saints…
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Stanley Fish, in a renowned essay on Bacon’s Essays , concludes that the essays are “unfinished with a purposefulness that makes the bestowing of the adjective less a criticism than a compliment.” He insists on the provisionality of knowledge, and “communicates that provisionality [in the Essays ] by letting the…
In a fascinating review of a recent book on evolution (TNR, Sept 4), Oren Harman suggests that reports of the death of Lamarck, proclaimed in every middle school science classroom for well over a century, may be somewhat exaggerated: Lamarckism “is and isn’t” dead. Insofar as Lamarckism meant “direct adaptive…
One of Barth’s main contentions that only a Triune God can give Himself. A monadic God might give, but would give something less than Himself. Only if God is both Himself and another, and only if that other is fully God, can God give Himself .
Bavinck writes: “It is wrong to conceive the decree as if it determined only a person’s end and coerced him or her in that direction regardless of what they did. The decree is as inconceivably rich as reality itself. It is, in fact, the fountainhead of all reality. It encompasses…
Blumenberg writes ( Legitimacy of the Modern Age ) that with Bacon, Kepler, and particularly Leibniz, the Augustinian suspicion of curiosity is overcome, and knowledge thereafter “justifies itself; it does not owe thanks for itself to God; it no longer has any tinge of illumination or graciously permitted participation but…
Blumenberg says that Bacon drew a distinction between metaphysics and physics in terms of human control: “The former has as its object the unalterable law beyond man’s influence; the latter comprises all knowledge of the operative and material causes that man can transpose in order to influence given states of…
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