Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While I think Zacharias Ursinus’ thinking would be profitable to consider, I am not recording his reflections in order for readers to come to agreement with his position as a whole. Rather, my interest is twofold. First, I think the way the Heidelberg Catechisms is used as a “proof” of…
On this question Hebrews 10 is quite clear and really needs no additional argument. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume…
Not all readers of this essay letter may be aware of it, but a tempest has been brewing in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a tempest created by the liberal party in that denomination. It came about this way. In January 2002, a Pastor’s Conference on covenant theology was…
Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years. But let me elaborate. When I became a Calvinist, back in 1970, I bought a bunch of books. Over the next few years,…
CHRIST THE PREACHER How Ephesians Shows Us Why Preaching is Essential to Salvation & Sanctification Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a…
Tracking the informal shifts in Protestant opinion regarding Baptism can be a difficult business. For example, in 1849 Anglican clergyman William Goode published his defense of Evangelicalism against the Anglo-Catholics under the title, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of…
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Richard Fenn ( Liturgies and Trials ) notes that serious, absolutely binding speech - promises, for instance - is comparatively rare in normal conversation. When we do make binding promises, we give ad receive “signs and symbols that something out of the ordinary is occurring” - an oath, an exchange…
The key thing about Obama’s skin is not its color, but its thickness. I have rarely seen such a thin-skinned, touchy politician. When Clinton said that Obama has the “political instincts of a Chicago thug,” that’s what he was talking about - he takes offense quickly and has a long…
James Rogers of Texas A&M writes with some notes on the charity of the law, which I reflected on earlier this week with a post on Matthew Levering’s book on Aquinas: “For this age, I suspect that we have most difficulty thinking of the Mosaic laws on sex as having…
Carroll’s chief argument is that the cross takes on a centrality after Constantine that it never had in earlier Christianity, which focused instead on the incarnation and resurrection. The cross was comparatively rare in the earliest Christian iconography, but the notion that Christianity, and Christian salvation, is focused on the…
Oh, my. I said earlier that Carroll is better than Dan Brown. I’m revising that estimate. He describes the Council of Nicea in a paragraph, implying that it was all Constantine’s doing. The bishops came up with a creed “in response to the emperor’s mandate.” He notes that it was…
Yesterday I recorded James Carroll’s claim that Constantine introduced the notion of a “unified” church into Christianity, but if I had read the next sentence I would have found a topper. Carroll says that Paul composed a “hymn to diversity” in “Corinth in Greece,” citing 1 Corinthians 12 in an…
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