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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INTRODUCTION John frequently exhorts his readers to love one another (2:10; 3:10, 11, 23), and speaks of God’s love for us (3:1). Here, he connects these two loves inseparably. The noun or verb “love” is used 27 times (3 x 3 x 3) in this chapter, and twice he addresses…
Nothing seems as anti-gnostic as the contemporary obsession with bodily perfection. We can remold our bodies in any way we want - tuck in here, enhance there, replant hair and remold biceps, remove wrinkles and signs of aging. In fact, this obsession is completely gnostic. It attempts to side-step the…
1 John 4:2: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Why do we have this meal? The simple answer is that Jesus commanded it. But why did He command it? After all, aren’t we in the New Covenant, which is a Spiritual…
Yesterday, January 6, was Epiphany, the beginning of one of the traditional seasons of the church year. The word “epiphany” means “manifestation” or “revelation.” Advent celebrates the coming of the Lord; Epiphany, His revelation. We need both. If God comes to us, but remains veiled and incognito, we will never…
In a 1980 essay, Richard Rorty offers a quick overview of the development of European thought from idealism through romanticism and pragmatism to what he calls textualism. The two ends of this development, idealism and textualism, are similar in various ways: both are antagonistic toward science, both claim that we…
Lubac is by all accounts one of the great Catholic theologians of the past century, and one of the most influential. He never worked on a dissertation, and because of the disruptions of war never went through a great deal of the formal training expected of Jesuits. He was eventually…
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