Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One striking aspect of the recent “Federal Vision” conflict in the various conservative micro-Reformed groups is a debate over what older theologians really meant and said. Examining the credentials of various people who speak with great assurance on these matters one sees repeatedly degrees in church/theology history studies. In fact,…
The Worship of the English Puritans by Horton Davies really valuable book for gaining historical perspective on the American Presbyterian scene. (I will note for the record that I don’t believe there is an objective definition for “puritan” and I wish historians would stop using it and instead speak of…
This is the conclusion to Frame’s discussion about historical/covenantal election in his The Doctrine of God (pp. 329-30): Historical election and eternal election are distinct, but they cannot be entirely separated. Note the following: 1. Both historical and eternal election are aspects of God’s saving purpose. The election of Israel…
From John Frame’s The Doctrine of God : So although the election of Israel is by grace, there is an important place for continued faithfulness. Individuals can belong to the chosen people, yet lose their elect status by faithlessness and disobedience. Branches can be broken off “because of unbelief” (Rom.…
I’ve recently re-discovered an awesome theological resource, The Westminster Shorter Catechism Project . It is excellent, not least because it demonstrates the healthy diversity that has always been allowable in the Reformed Tradition until recently. For example, consider the sources attached to Question and Answer #94: Q: What is baptism?…
A friend recently asked if the frequent saying of the Pledge of Allegiance was a sign of American jingoism, or an attempt to inculcate “nationalism” of a bad sort. It seemed to him as a Canadian that that might be the case. That seemed to me to be probably backwards,…
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O’Donovan makes the point, against Markus, that Augustine does not describe the earthly city as a combination of private ends and public or common utility. This would be a secular system, which leaves ends to individual citizens as they make use of common goods. O’Donovan says Augustine does something like…
Von Balthasar again: Creation is God’s free decision. There need not be a world. “But if he decides to create a world, then of course this decision can only take the form of the analogy of being, which is grounded in God’s very ‘essence’ itself. Created being must be by…
Von Balthasar says that grace presupposes a nature that is free from revelation: “If there is to be revelation, then it can only proceed from God to a creature - to a creature that precisely as a creature does not include revelation in its conceptual range.” Van Til is much…
Von Balthasar puts the nature/grace distinction in simple terms, and ones that resonate with certain strains of Reformed theology: “It belongs to the very essence of the creature that it must indeed be creature, but not a creature who has been exalted to a new order of grace: by nature…
Rahner says that God’s self-gift “can and must” be an “ever astounding wonder, the unexpected, the unexacted gift.” In an extended footnote, he explains that this “can and must” means both that God’s self-communication is in fact unexacted, and that it must be of necessity . On the latter point:…
Rahner re-describes the nature/grace problem in terms of God’s self-communicating love, which is the final cause of creation and the first intention of God: “Everything else exists so that this one thing might be: the eternal miracle of infinite Love.” (Good Edwardsian supralapsarian, he.) But for Rahner, as for every…
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