Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Rounding Out the Traditional Doctrine of Justification Justification and the Church The traditional Protestant doctrine of justification fails to fully hold together the soteriological (forgiveness of sins) and the ecclesiological (covenant membership). This is part of a larger problem, of course, namely, the dichotomizing of church and salvation. Biblically and…
John Piper’s book, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002) is, from any perspective, a passionate work. Nevertheless, I find I need to disagree with parts of it. The reason I do this is not because John Piper’s book does…
What follows is a handout for a Sunday School class I have taught recently at my church . Presbyterian doctrine teaches what the Bible says about God sovereign control over history and his unconditional choice (election) to bring some people to everlasting glory while allowing others to remain in unbelief…
“Covenantal Nomism” sounds like a description of tiny contract-loving creatures who live underground. But it is actually a recent term used to describe the pattern of religious belief and practice in first-century Palestinian Judaism. The idea is that God graciously establishes a structured relationship based on promises, a “covenant,” with…
What follows deals primarily with two essays, one by Dr. Douglas Kelly and the other by The Rev. Richard Phillips . My reason for writing this essay is that many people are confidently saying things about N. T. Wright that I believe are contrary to fact. I choose Dr. Kelly…
The Bible is often treated as a book of rules with directions for living. To some extent, that is true; but it is neither the whole truth nor the most important truth about the book. Ultimately, the Bible is a story about God and man and their reconciliation in Christ.…
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Many early novelists aimed at social reform. Were they successful? According to a 1870 reviewer of J.E. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen , they were: “it is the increase of knowledge among the wealthier classes which has stimulated their sympathies for the the poorer, and, in the course of the…
INTRODUCTION Twice in Acts, an apostle uses Psalm 16 as a proof text for the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:25-28; 13:35). Psalm 16 is an Easter Psalm. THE TEXT “Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You. I said to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have…
Matthew 26:30: And after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Jesus and His disciples ended the last supper with a hymn. What did they sing? The texts in the gospels don’t tell us, but we can surmise from Jewish tradition that they sang the hymn…
I read from Psalm 118:17: I will not die, but live, and tell of the works of the LORD. The LORD has disciplined me severely, but He has not given me over to death. From the time of Augustine, Christians have read the Psalms as the words of Christ. In…
The crowds greet Jesus as He arrives in Jerusalem singing from Psalm 118: “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” That’s also one of the phrases we commonly use in our liturgy. Many versions of the Sanctus, the “Holy, holy, holy,” conclude…
A number of readers have been skeptical about my earlier post on converted Jerusalem. Several have noted that Rodney Stark’s population statistics for Jerusalem don’t fit well with information we get from Josephus, who claims that the population of Jerusalem was much larger than 20,000. In a 1982 article from…
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