Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God…
With the surprising discovery of the Nelda Boswell scroll historians have deciphered its contents and concluded that the apostle Paul returned to the region of Galatia shortly after he wrote the letter that we call Galatians. The evidence suggests that a number of local pastors, elders, and deacons, along with…
Second Temple Judaism was a form of covenantal nomism, according to E. P. Sanders’ terminology. This means that Torah-observance was a way of expressing loyalty to the Lord of the covenant who had graciously elected Israel. I think Sanders’ view (taken up in bits and pieces and with some modifications…
We often hear that the key to Christian obedience is thankfulness for what God has done. But the Bible stresses faith and hope much more than gratitude. The Baptist pastor and author John Piper has written, “Nowhere in the Bible is gratitude connected explicitly with obedience as a motivation. We…
One of the questions that is commonly asked about Tom Wright regards his teaching about how Paul uses the term “the righteousness of God.” Since Wright’s interpretation of the term in Paul’s epistles is commonly mentioned in passing but rarely analyzed, it seems like a good idea to explicitly spell…
If God promised a certain land to the seed of Abraham, saying that it would be theirs “forever” (Gen. 13:15), why do Reformed churches teach that the Jews permanently lost their right to the land? What about all these Old Testament “forever” promises and prophesies made to the Jews? How…
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Matthias Scheeben’s nature/supernatural scheme depends on the assumption that matter is ponderous, an obstacle and obstruction to the free operation of spirit, an enslaving massiveness, gross and crass. Scheeben wrote before the revolution of twentieth-century physics, so we can forgive him for not thinking out the implications of quantum physics…
N. T. Wright has recently been telling people they’ve got personal eschatology wrong. Heaven is not the final destination for the saints, but they will be raised in transfigured bodies to inhabit a newly united heaven-and-earth. That this causes jaw-dropping astonishment is itself jaw-droppingly astonishing. Hasn’t anyone ever read the…
Scheeben says that what is natural to one being may be supernatural for another. Immortality is natural to angels, “a pure spirit, whose entire essence is on a higher plane, because no opposition between matter and the principle of life has place in him.” For men, immortality is supernatural, since…
Matthias Scheeben makes explicit the troubling underpinnings of the nature/supernatural distinction. When we are refashioned by grace “on the model of the higher, divine nature,” we enter into a “new, special relationship with God, who now draws near to man in His own essence, and not only as Creator of…
Can unbelievers know truth? The whole question has been distorted by failing to ask, Which unbelievers? In what circumstances? In what stage of unbelief? The New Testament shows the Jews who reject Jesus as blind, but also shows them being blinded, or blinding themselves. To give a zero-sum answer to…
My son Woelke pointed me to a piece in Slate on the resignation of Tim Goeglein, who resigned recently as the White House liaison to religious groups, after it was revealed that he had stolen material for published columns over the past several years. What tipped off Nancy Nall Derringer,…
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