Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While I think Zacharias Ursinus’ thinking would be profitable to consider, I am not recording his reflections in order for readers to come to agreement with his position as a whole. Rather, my interest is twofold. First, I think the way the Heidelberg Catechisms is used as a “proof” of…
On this question Hebrews 10 is quite clear and really needs no additional argument. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume…
Not all readers of this essay letter may be aware of it, but a tempest has been brewing in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a tempest created by the liberal party in that denomination. It came about this way. In January 2002, a Pastor’s Conference on covenant theology was…
Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years. But let me elaborate. When I became a Calvinist, back in 1970, I bought a bunch of books. Over the next few years,…
CHRIST THE PREACHER How Ephesians Shows Us Why Preaching is Essential to Salvation & Sanctification Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a…
Tracking the informal shifts in Protestant opinion regarding Baptism can be a difficult business. For example, in 1849 Anglican clergyman William Goode published his defense of Evangelicalism against the Anglo-Catholics under the title, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of…
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God’s fiery presence descends from Sinai and no one can enter tabernacle. It happens again when the temple is finished. But when the Spirit falls, the disciples stand in the fiery presence and are not consumed. They have become asbestos. They are Daniel’s three friends in the furnace; burning bushes.…
David’s life recapitulates and predicts the history of Israel. Fleeing from Saul, he goes into exile westward among the Philistines, a repeat of the Egyptian exile. He comes out of Philistia to conquer the the land and take the throne. Later, his son Absalom rebels and drives David out of…
In his contribution to Martin Bucer: Reforming Church and Community (73), Ian Hazlett calls attention to Bucer’s sense of the breadth of the issues involved in the debate over real presence: “for Bucer by now the issue of the presence of Christ in Communion goes far beyond fixing one’s attention…
Ian Hazlett ( Martin Bucer , 78) observes that some Anabaptist groups taught “a radicalized Anselmian doctrine of the all-sufficiency of Calvary, by which Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross effects per se salvation for those who so believe. This reductionist externalization of Christ is then reinforced when it is…
When the angels come out with their trumpets, they “prepare ( hetoimazo ) to trumpet them” (Revelation 8:6). It’s not clear what that means. A warm up, with old jazz standards first improvised by Jubal? Cleaning the mouthpiece or valves? The more important point of the reference seems to be…
Jesus is “first and last” ( protos kai eschatos ) and He says so at the beginning and end of Revelation - at the first and the last (1:17; 2:8; 22:13). “First and last” is the first and last thing Jesus says. In between these two declarations, there are several…
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