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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Christ’s life, says John Owen in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ , is entirely an oblation and a gift. Though “the perfecting or consummating of this oblation be set out in the Scripture chiefly in respect of what Christ suffered,” still Christ’s offering includes everything He…
The fifth of Ralph Smith’s studies in Deuteronomy is available today at the Trinity House site.
In a wide-ranging review of the evidence in the TLS, Eric Naiman concludes that Dickens never met Dostoevsky, and Dickens never confessed to Dostoevsky what Claire Tomalin says he confessed. Tomalin cited a letter from Dostoevsky describing Dickens’s confession: “All the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even…
NT Wright, following a long tradition, explains that justification is a declaratory act. It is a verdict of acquitted, cleared, vindicated in the view of the court. There is an immediate communal dimension to this: The acquitted person is “in good standing in the community as the result of the…
Various commentators suggest that the four living creatures in Revelation (ox, lion, eagle, man) represent the whole of animate creation joined to praise God. Which raises the obvious question: Where are the fish? You have a sky animal, a wild land animal, a domesticated land animal, and a man to…
Bruce Ellis Benson summarizes his opening argument in Liturgy as a Way of Life: Embodying the Arts in Christian Worship with this: “the fundamental structure of our lives is that of the call and response. That call and response can rightly be considered artistic in that we are - in…
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