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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In 1665, one Sabbatai Tsevi of Smyrna announced himself to the world as a Kabbalistic messiah who would bring in the final restoration ( tiqqun ). Yet, a year later, under a threat of execution from the sultan of Turkey, Tsevi converted to Islam. Instead of giving up their support…
In his Operation Shylock , Philip Roth’s double, Moishe Pipik (Yiddish for “Moses Bellybutton”), advocates a reverse Zionism known as Diasporism. He is encouraging Jews to return to Eastern Europe, and imagines that “People will be jubilant. People will be in tears. They will be shouting, ‘Our Jews are back!…
Some decades ago, James Barr criticized biblical scholars for a fallacy he labeled “illegitimate totality transfer.” By this phrase, Barr was referring to the habit of some biblical scholars to pack every possible meaning of a word into every context. Lane Keister’s ongoing critique of my work on justification charges…
Christian worship is God’s service to us. Yet, Christian worship is sacrificial, and sacrifice appears to be a human act reaching toward God. That’s certainly how Luther understood the sacrifice of the Mass. How to resolve? Teresa Okure, Professor of New Testament and Gender Hermeneutics (!) at the Catholic Institute…
An essay of mine on Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy is currently available on the First Things web site, here: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/?p=786.
The NT uses the Greek word aggelia twice, both in 1 John (1:5; 3:11). The noun comes from the same root as euaggelion , good news, and Raymond Brown suggests that aggelia is the Johannine equivalent - meaning “good news” or “gospel. If this is true, 1 John’s two uses…
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