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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Thomas Buchan gave a superb response paper at the Ancient Evangelical Future Conference at Trinity School of Ministry. Buchan’s paper was dynamite under every idealization of Nicea and its effect on the church. For starters, he pointed out that the Nicene Creed was not the only creed in circulation. There…
Michael Lefebvre’s Singing the Songs of Jesus: Revisiting the Psalms is a solid, remarkably in-depth defense of Psalm-singing. He roots the study in an examination of the organization of the Levitical choir in Chronicles, and the king’s role as the lay liturgical leader “under whose hand” the Levites led the…
On the Trinity House site, Mark Horne discusses Romans 1 and asks how Paul says wrath is revealed .
Blind people are not themselves cursed. Jesus made that clear. Yet blindness is a sign of the curse. It signals the possibility of objectification, the possibility (unknown in Eden) of gazing at a person who cannot return the gaze, the possibility of a unilateral gaze. In blindness is embedded the…
The NYT Book Review has a review of Giovanni Della Casa’s Renaissance etiquette book, Galateo: Or, The Rules of Polite Behavior . The reviewer, Judith Martin sums up some of the wisdom: “Don’t be disgusting. Pretty much everything that comes out of a bodily orifice meets his definition of disgusting…
Pastor Ralph Smith continues his analysis of Deuteronomy 14 at the Trinity House web site.
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