Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Study in Biblical and Practical Theology Sunday School Notes / Epiphany 2004 Introductory Note: January 6 is Epiphany in the traditional church calendar. Though Epiphany is often treated as a single day, with the Sundays following counted as “Sundays after Epiphany,” we will treat Epiphany as an extended season.…
Imagine someone from another world trying to learn to live in our society according to our customs. What if someone gave him a check for a hundred dollars for his birthday–the first check he had ever seen in his life? Would he immediately understand how a check was used? Perhaps…
According to Presbyterian doctrine, as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, baptism is a baptized person’s “admission… into the visible church.” By referring to the “visible church,” the document makes clear it is referring to the present institutional Church with all her imperfections, as opposed to the future Church…
N. T. Wright claims that in the Apostle Paul’s writings “righteousness,” as it predicated of humans, denotes “covenant membership.” When he wrote this in the New Bible Dictionary edited by Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, and David Wright, no one thought this was too big a deal. However, when he…
It seems almost human nature to think that we can find something to do for God that will make Him do us favors. If we live more virtuously, or cut down on a vice or two, then God will have to reward us. But the problem with this notion is…
The First Commandment teaches us to trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. The First Commandment reads (I’m using NASB throughout): “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Obviously, trusting in someone or something else (even one’s own good works) for justification, sanctification, and eternal life”…
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Stanford’s Carl N. Degler’s In Search of Human Nature tells the story of the contest between biological and cultural determinists in the social sciences. Much of late 19th-century social science was shaped by a crude Darwinian paradigm. Biological factors like race and sex were considered to be the chief determinants…
One of the many ironies of contemporary political discourse is the co-option of Malthus by the political left, for the Rev. Thomas Malthus was undoubtedly a man of the right. His Essay on the Principle of Population was an anti-utopian tract designed to refute what Malthus called, in his original…
Christian apologetics tends to focus on ethical or rational arguments. Questions such as “Can we be good without God?” and “Does that being exist than which nothing greater can be conceived?” and “What are the transcendental conditions of knowledge?” have dominated the field. A good historical argument can be made,…
A number of years ago, Stanley Jaki, a Roman Catholic historian of science, published an article in Modern Age defending the technological acumen of medievals. He cited three medieval inventions that provide evidence “of the striking modernity ofthe Middle Ages.” So many innovations came from the Middle Ages that “as…
Much of the following is borrowed from James Jordan’s lectures on Ecclesiastes given at the 2005 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference. INTRODUCTION Life in the twenty-first century is frantic and ever-changing. Today’s styles quickly become passé, old skills are soon useless, nothing holds still long enough to harden into habit. Ecclesiastes…
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon offers intriguing, somewhat paradoxical reflections on the problems of change and permanence. On the one hand, the reality that provokes his opening lament that the world is “vapor” is the apparently unchanging permanence: The sun rises and sets day after day, the rivers flow into the seas…
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