Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Book Review The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation & Evangelism by Norman Shepherd The Call of Grace is an excellent manual to put in the hands of laymen to teach them how to rest in God’s grace while taking seriously the prize of the upward call of…
My Role as a Parent in My Children’s Salvation Evangeline Jael Horne is our third child. My two boys were born while we were at seminary and we had the privilege of giving them to Jeff Meyers, our pastor at that time, for baptism. When Evangeline was born, however, I…
John Calvin writes in the Institutes about the possibility of admitting children to the Lord’s Supper by virtue of their baptism once and only once: At length they object, that there is not greater reason for admitting infants to baptism than to the Lord’s Supper, to which, however, they are…
The debate over paedocommunion does not seem to have made much headway on either side in recent years. Certainly both sides have made a solid effort to argue for their position. But no resolution seems to be forthcoming in the near future. As a convinced paedocommunionist, I find the church’s…
Lots of conservative Protestants want to answer “no” to this question. The problem with this position is that conservative Protestants are bound to believe what the Bible teaches. And the Bible says inconvenient things, like “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3.21), or “all of you who were baptized into…
This paper is something of a follow-up to my earlier study, “ Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future .” One of the more controversial aspects of that paper was my claim that Calvin held to a very high view of baptismal efficacy. Indeed, he was a…
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Jim Rogers of Texas A&M responds to my posts about liberalism, where I quoted a couple of passages from a recent essay by John Milbank. Rogers writes: “I do think that there is probably a liberal anthropology that can be criticized in a way similar to Milbank. But sometimes I…
When Jesus tells Peter to forgive “seventy times seven” times, He is only alluding to the climax of God’s dealings with Israel that Daniel prophesied; he is He is also is alluding to Lamech, who threatened to avenge himself “seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:22-23). Lamech was the descendant of Cain. Cain was…
In the first year of Darius, Daniel was studying the book of Jeremiah’s prophecies when he came upon the prophecy that Israel would be released from captivity after 70 years. The 70th year of exile was coming, and so Daniel began fasting in sackcloth and ashes, and be began confessing…
Frederick Beiser’s ( Fate of Reason ) account of Hamann is a mess. He gets the history right (so far as I know it), but his summary of Hamann’s thought is not only mistaken; it’s incoherent. For Hamann, Beiser says, “faith is an immediate experience,” like sense experience, but on…
Hamann does believe, as many postmoderns do, that we have no access to reality without language. But for Hamann this does not mean that we suffer “linguistic claustropobia,” or “outsidelessness.” Dickson again: “the fact that perceiving and understanding are inseparable from speaking is commonsensical; one no more need despair over…
Hamann says that the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation does not, despite its apparent attention to the human author, really honor the author. This is because historical-critical interpretation is “castrated,” removing all passion and kerygmatic intention. Dickson writes, “The desires and kerygmatic intentions of the biblical authors are appreciated, and…
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