Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I appreciate Andy Webb’s recent entry into the current discussion over baptismal efficacy. 1 This is an issue which has consumed a great deal of time and energy in the Reformed world in recent years. It is not likely to subside soon. As a contributing party to the discussion, I…
The Covenant Vision of the Heidelberg & Westminster Catechisms Regarding Children and Baptism 7 POINTS ABOUT THE TEACHING OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death? Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but…
Is the Holiday Unpresbyterian? ‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others 1 ) claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to…
This month we begin by considering Alan D. Strange’s article, “Understanding the ‘Federal Vision'” published in the February 2007 issue of New Horizons, the official denominational magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Mr. Strange is an OPC minister, a teacher at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, and was a member of the…
There is no reason to believe that Matthew 24, Mark 13, or Luke 21 records Jesus prophesying about what is now known in Christian theology as “the Second Coming.” In my opinion, the fact that most modern conservative Christian scholars and pastors are not yet willing to acknowledge that the…
Francis Turretin, the Reformed theologian of the seventeenth century, carefully distinguishes the Reformed view of infant faith from Lutheran and Anabaptist claims. Anabaptists denied any faith to infants so that they could justify their refusal to baptize them. Lutherans affirmed (rightly) that covenant infants were believers, but made no distinction…
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A hab of Israel pops into Chronicles for the first time in 2 Chronicles 18. Readers of Chronicles don't know the background that 1-2 Kings provides—about Ahab's father Omri, about Baal worship and the temple of Baal in Samaria, about Ahab's marriage to Jezebel. Careful readers of Chronicles will notice…
B ack in December, Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors scored 60 points in a game. That's a lot. More impressive is the fact that he scored 60 points while playing 29 minutes, for an average of 2.07 points per minute played. The mind-numbing stat, though, is his time…
I n Enneads 5.143, Plotinus reasons: “If the First is perfect, the most perfect of all, and the primal power, it must be the most powerful of all beings and the other powers must imitate it as far as they are able. . . . Fire warms, snow cools, and…
P agans called Zeus “Father,” but, according to Joseph Ratzinger ( The God of Jesus Christ ), “they meant that Zeus was like human fathers—sometimes really nice, when he was in a good mood, but ultimately an egotist, a tyrant, unpredictable, unfathomable, and dangerous. And this was how they experienced…
J oseph Ratzinger ( The God of Jesus Christ ) discerns an underlying commonality between rigorous asceticism and free libertinism. Both express a hatred of the body: “In the false asceticism that is hostile to the creation, the body becomes a dirty bag of maggots that deserves only disdain or,…
T he loss of Aristotelian/Thomist teleological conceptions of reality is often cited as one of the significant shifts in the formation of modernity. It wasn't, however, a secularizing move. As David Hawkes points out ( Idols of the Marketplace ), Bacon saw the notion of a final cause as a…
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