Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
OUR REFORMED HERITAGE When a Reformed Christian hears “baptismal regeneration,” what comes to mind? “Heresy,” most likely. Unfortunately, many in the Reformed community today have lost touch with some important aspects of their own heritage. If Reformed theology is going to continue reforming according to Scripture, we must recover the…
Faith and assurance are recurring subjects of controversy in Evangelical circles. We all agree that we are saved by the righteousness of Christ reckoned to us, which we receive through faith alone. Jesus lived and died and rose again as the representative of his people so that all of them…
What’s at stake (or not!) for Reformed Pastors regarding the contemporary discussion of Paul and “the works of the law”? There has been a great deal of talk lately about “the New Perspective on Paul” and the works of, among others, Ed Sanders, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright. Each…
When Christ enjoins upon the young man the duty of following him (Mt. 19:23), he does not give a counsel, but a command to all in common because no one can have a hope of salvation unless he follows Christ (2 Pet. 2:21), although from a particular cause it is…
This short paper is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis and defense of N. T. Wright, much less the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” as a whole. Indeed, Wright’s theological project has some failings and the New Perspective as a movement must be considered a mixed bag of…
Leviticus 1:3-13, Translation 3 If his Nearbringing is an Ascension from the herd, a perfect male shall he bring him near. To the forecourt of the Tent of Meeting he shall bring him near, for his acceptance before Yahweh. 4 And he shall lean his hand on the head of…
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Kelly Kapic ( God So Loved, He Gave: Entering the Movement of Divine Generosity , 206-8) explains the various motivations of Pal’s Collection for the saints in Jerusalem: to relieve poverty, to unify the churchto share God’s grace together. There was also an eschatological motivation: “While it is nowhere stated…
In a brief discussion of tithing, Kapic ( God So Loved, He Gave: Entering the Movement of Divine Generosity , 153) notes that the Levites received tithes from the people and then tithed the tithe to the priests “who had no other means of income.” That is somewhat overstated, since…
In his excellent study of God’s generosity ( God So Loved, He Gave: Entering the Movement of Divine Generosity , 134-5), Kelly Kapic summarizes the “righteousness” of Job: “In Job 29:1-25 this man describes, in his own words, what his righteousness actually looked like. Above all, we find that Job’s…
In his introduction to Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (p. 5), Richard Seaford argues that the “debate about the extent to which virtues in Homer are cooperative (such as justice and generosity) or competitive (such as individual prowess in war)” is wrong-headed. Seaford claims that “this distinction may obstruct our understanding…
John Thompson explains Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence in his introduction to Language and Symbolic Power : “Instead of analyzing the exchange of gifts in terms of a formal structure of reciprocity, in the manner of Lévi–Strauss, Bourdieu views it as a mechanism through which power is exercised and…
In his Megaevents and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture , Maurice Roche has a scathing review of the International Olympic Committee’s interactions with the Nazis at the Berlin Olympics in 1936: “The IOC collaborated with the Nazi government in allowing what was predictably a major…
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