Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Study in Biblical and Practical Theology Sunday School Notes / Epiphany 2004 Introductory Note: January 6 is Epiphany in the traditional church calendar. Though Epiphany is often treated as a single day, with the Sundays following counted as “Sundays after Epiphany,” we will treat Epiphany as an extended season.…
Imagine someone from another world trying to learn to live in our society according to our customs. What if someone gave him a check for a hundred dollars for his birthday–the first check he had ever seen in his life? Would he immediately understand how a check was used? Perhaps…
According to Presbyterian doctrine, as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, baptism is a baptized person’s “admission… into the visible church.” By referring to the “visible church,” the document makes clear it is referring to the present institutional Church with all her imperfections, as opposed to the future Church…
N. T. Wright claims that in the Apostle Paul’s writings “righteousness,” as it predicated of humans, denotes “covenant membership.” When he wrote this in the New Bible Dictionary edited by Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, and David Wright, no one thought this was too big a deal. However, when he…
It seems almost human nature to think that we can find something to do for God that will make Him do us favors. If we live more virtuously, or cut down on a vice or two, then God will have to reward us. But the problem with this notion is…
The First Commandment teaches us to trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. The First Commandment reads (I’m using NASB throughout): “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Obviously, trusting in someone or something else (even one’s own good works) for justification, sanctification, and eternal life”…
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Finally getting around to Jorge Gracia’s Theory of Textuality . It’s got a lot of strengths. Gracia recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of textual meaning, and sensibly tests theories by their ability to explain our actual experience of texts. Postmodern diffusion can’t explain the fact of daily…
Considering the plural pronoun at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, Chrysostom says that it announces a moral and social revolution: “by this He at once takes away hatred, and quells pride, and casts out envy, and brings in the mother of all good things, even charity, and exterminates the…
Athenagoras condemns worship of the creation using a musical analogy ( A Plea for Christians ): “If therefore the world is an instrument in tune, and moving in well-measured time, I adore the Being who gave its harmony, and strikes its notes, and sings the accordant strain, and not the…
Gregory of Nyssa explains in On the Making of Man that the human body is like a musical instrument, designed for reason. This is itself a striking image, but Nyssa expounds on the analogy by looking at the specific contours of the human body. The passage reminds me of Leon…
Clement of Alexandria begins his Exhortation to the Heathen by reviewing various myths about music, and then introduces the gospel as God’s new song. By the time he’s done, he’s told the history of the world musically: “Behold the might of the new song! It has made men out of…
In his study of children’s literature ( Stars, Tigers, and the Shape of Words ), JH Prynne mounts a critique of Saussure designed to show that “the methodology of practical literary criticism habitually contradicts Saussure’s theory of language by assuming that acoustic or graphic properties of the sign do contribute…
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