Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I appreciate Andy Webb’s recent entry into the current discussion over baptismal efficacy. 1 This is an issue which has consumed a great deal of time and energy in the Reformed world in recent years. It is not likely to subside soon. As a contributing party to the discussion, I…
The Covenant Vision of the Heidelberg & Westminster Catechisms Regarding Children and Baptism 7 POINTS ABOUT THE TEACHING OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death? Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but…
Is the Holiday Unpresbyterian? ‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others 1 ) claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to…
This month we begin by considering Alan D. Strange’s article, “Understanding the ‘Federal Vision'” published in the February 2007 issue of New Horizons, the official denominational magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Mr. Strange is an OPC minister, a teacher at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, and was a member of the…
There is no reason to believe that Matthew 24, Mark 13, or Luke 21 records Jesus prophesying about what is now known in Christian theology as “the Second Coming.” In my opinion, the fact that most modern conservative Christian scholars and pastors are not yet willing to acknowledge that the…
Francis Turretin, the Reformed theologian of the seventeenth century, carefully distinguishes the Reformed view of infant faith from Lutheran and Anabaptist claims. Anabaptists denied any faith to infants so that they could justify their refusal to baptize them. Lutherans affirmed (rightly) that covenant infants were believers, but made no distinction…
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Much of 2 Corinthians is Paul’s defense of his apostolic ministry, which is also a defense of the reliability of the gospel he preached at Corinth. One of the things that led some people to doubt Paul’s status as an apostle was his life of suffering. How can God be…
Suicide has been the province of psychiatrists, sociologists, moralists, theologians, and the occasional anthropologist (Durkheim). It has not gotten much attention from students of theater and dramatic performance. The contributors to Suicide as a Dramatic Performance assume that such a perspective can be illuminating - for some, though not all…
Jenson observes that “Israel knew itself as created by God's word, in the exact sense in which we until recently spoke of ‘a gentleman's word.' Yahweh made a promise and kept it, and just so Israel came to be.” Other nations could boast of “a visible and tangible presence of…
Robert Jenson argues in Unbaptized God that debates about justification regularly fail to notice the multivocal character of the word. Everyone knows that we have different views of justification, but we all believe that they are different “forms of teaching within the same locus of theology, that is, they are…
In the second volume of his Systematic Theology , Jenson raises pointed, Edwardsean questions about free will theodicies. Such devices suppose “that God once created and then somehow retreated, so that at least some things that happen within creation, those dependent on creatures' ‘free will,' he merely, as it were,…
Robert Jenson admits in a 2004 essay that in most of his theological writing he tried to do without the claim that Scripture is inspired. Historically, inspiration has been used to justify the authority of Scripture, but Jenson doesn't believe that use of inspiration is necessary. It's simply obvious that…
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