Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Rounding Out the Traditional Doctrine of Justification Justification and the Church The traditional Protestant doctrine of justification fails to fully hold together the soteriological (forgiveness of sins) and the ecclesiological (covenant membership). This is part of a larger problem, of course, namely, the dichotomizing of church and salvation. Biblically and…
John Piper’s book, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002) is, from any perspective, a passionate work. Nevertheless, I find I need to disagree with parts of it. The reason I do this is not because John Piper’s book does…
What follows is a handout for a Sunday School class I have taught recently at my church . Presbyterian doctrine teaches what the Bible says about God sovereign control over history and his unconditional choice (election) to bring some people to everlasting glory while allowing others to remain in unbelief…
“Covenantal Nomism” sounds like a description of tiny contract-loving creatures who live underground. But it is actually a recent term used to describe the pattern of religious belief and practice in first-century Palestinian Judaism. The idea is that God graciously establishes a structured relationship based on promises, a “covenant,” with…
What follows deals primarily with two essays, one by Dr. Douglas Kelly and the other by The Rev. Richard Phillips . My reason for writing this essay is that many people are confidently saying things about N. T. Wright that I believe are contrary to fact. I choose Dr. Kelly…
The Bible is often treated as a book of rules with directions for living. To some extent, that is true; but it is neither the whole truth nor the most important truth about the book. Ultimately, the Bible is a story about God and man and their reconciliation in Christ.…
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Hamann, describing the Christian giving his heart to God as a renunciation of ownership of his heart: “Here it is my God! You demanded it, as blind, hard, rocky, misguided, and stubborn as it was. Purify it, create it anew, and let it become the workshot of your good Spirit.…
Ken Way of Biola University gave a very interesting paper on the various Hebrew terms for donkeys and mules. He focused on Zechariah 9, which, he argued, has long been mistranslated. It has the largest cluster of donkey terms in the Hebrew Bible, refers to the prophecy concerning Judah in…
Al Wolters gave a very thorough and sophisticated explanation of the term peres in the writing on the wall in Daniel 5. I can’t reproduce it all, but one of the cool things that emerged from it was that the weights mentioned add up to 181, and the date of…
Christian Eberhart of Lutheran Theological Seminary gave a presentation on the nature of sacrifice. I’m not a stickler for method, but there were basic methodological problems with Eberhart’s approach. He started from a definition of sacrifice from Wolfhart Stegeman, which laid out four meanings of the word “sacrifice” in modern…
Lawrence Wellborn gave a fascinating paper on Alain Badiou’s treatment of Paul. I’m not sure I can summarize everything in his rich and wide-ranging paper, but I’ll try to get some of the main themes in the enumerated points below. 1) He began with a summary of what Badiou means…
INTRODUCTION When Jesus comes into the world, He claims that the “time is fulfilled,” and the rest of the New Testament fills this out. With the coming of Jesus, a new age begins. We live in a different time because of Jesus, and this different time should be embodied in…
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