Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Camping’s Attempted Substantiation Camping attempts to justify his hypothesis with several lines of argument, all of which are erroneous. 1. Gaps in Genealogies He first mentions the fact that in some of the "begatitudes" of the Bible, generations are left out for some reason or other. Matthew 1:8 and 11,…
I am often asked why I am not an Episcopalian, since I like liturgy so much. My answer is that if I had a call to serve in Episcopal circles, I would certainly entertain it. When I have looked into such groups as the Reformed Episcopal Church, however, I have…
For Part 1, click HERE . Now, what does this mean? Are we to believe that Adam was supposed to earn "merits" before God apart from faith ? Surely nobody wants to maintain this. The traditional explainers of the covenant of works always try to nuance their theology so as…
This issue of Biblical Chronology begins a second series of studies. The first series, Vols. I:1–V:4, concerned the chronology of the Bible itself. We saw, first, that the Bible is indeed concerned with chronology, contains much chronological information, and that the chronology in the Bible is complete from creation to…
David A. Weir, The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). A thorough reevaluation of the federal theology is desperately needed today. John Murray, in his introduction to The Covenant of Grace (1953) appropriately reminds us that it is of the essence…
An "essay" is a foray into a topic. It is not the last word. I hope that this essay or foray is a helpful word. This essay is designed as brief and suggestive. The doctrine of the covenant of works finds expression in the Westminster Standards, where it is also…
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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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