Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation This essay is a brief argument that the soteriology of John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion regarding union with Christ and the imputation of his righteousness is the same as…
The thoughts in this paper were largely prompted by a study of Walter E. Krebs, “The Word and the Sacraments,” Mercersburg Review (July, 1867), 366-383. The discussion in this paper presupposes my earlier studies of baptism, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future” and “Calvin on Baptism,…
Sometimes our systematic theology creates an illusion of precision. For example, we distinguish the ground and instrument of justification. Justification is grounded in Christ’s work alone, and is instrumentally received by faith alone. That makes good sense and guards us from thinking that faith itself is somehow meritorious. All the…
Whenever we participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we remember Christ and His Work for us. We remember. And in remembering, we imitate God, as His creatures made after His image. God remembers. This is mysterious to us because we usually think of remembering in the context of our…
It is standard in paedobaptist circles to argue for the baptism of infants out of the Old Covenant system. Because there is no explicit command in the New Testament, we are left to the broader principles and patterns of Scripture. In the Old Covenant, we continually find that the children…
Luther popularized the law/gospel hermeneutic. Luther argued that any demands God made upon us fell into the category of “law” and could only condemn. By contrast, anything God gave us was “gospel” and came with no strings attached. Calvin paid lip service to this law/gospel antithesis, even though it was…
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N. T. Wright’s views on Paul and justification will be misconstrued if they are examined outside the context of his views on Israel’s history and Jesus’ role in that history. That is, Wright’s work is of a piece – his historical Jesus studies are essential to a proper understanding of…
To understand EP Sanders’s “revolution” in Pauline studies, it’s helpful to look at Bultmann’s understanding of Paul, against which Sanders and others are explicitly and implicitly reacting. (I’m following the superb summary in Stephen Westerholm’s Perspectives Old and New on Paul.) Bultmann’s starting point is anthropological. As a creature, man…
In his book, The Reign of Chivalry , Richard Barber gives a very fine summary of the courtly love tradition and the romantic tradition that it produced. I reproduce here only some of the main points of his discussion of the lyric love poetry of the troubadours. 1) Courtly love,…
INTRODUCTION Matthew’s gospel is organized to show that Jesus is the True Israel, reliving Israel’s history faithfully. But Matthew also shows that Jesus is Israel’s God, who is rejected by His own people but triumphs over their rejection. THE TEXT “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son…
Early in the Summa theologiae , Thomas defends the fourfold interpretation of the Old Testament Scripture by saying that the words of Scripture refer univocally to things, and that God providentially uses those things to signify later things. In this, he was anticipated by Hugh of St. Victor. In his…
Roch Kereszty asks why, if “Scriptural formulas are the most accurate and the best suited for expressing christological doctrine,” we need “theological speculation.” He answers that theology exists to clarify and explain the Bible: “Systematic theologians . . . will follow the direction given in the New Testament itself (that…
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