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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In the introduction to his Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture) , Daniel Boyarin reviews the history of the history of Christianity and Judaism, criticizing the common older view that Christianity is the “daughter” of Judaism. Recent scholars tell a different…
For Clement of Alexandria, not death but martyrdom is the great leveler: “Just as it is noble for a man to die for virtue, for freedom, and for himself, just so is it for woman. For it is not peculiar to the nature of males, but to the nature of…
According to Michael Waldstein’s introduction, the “single main argument” that runs through Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body (TOB) is “the teaching of Humanae Vitae about the inseparability of the unitive and procreative meaning of the conjugal act,” and the insistence of that encyclical that…
Joseph is often described as a snotty little upstart, a gossip and tattletale who brings an evil report about his brothers back to his father. I think that misses the whole tone of the story. Joseph is the “foreman” of his brothers (at the age of 17!), a younger son…
I was introduced to the work of Jim Jordan many years ago with his wonderful book “Through New Eyes.” In it, Jordan suggests there is “a real need for books that dig into the Bible and set out the Bible’s own worldview, explaining the Bible’s own language. The Biblical worldview…
Some observations after grading a pile of student papers on the robe motif in the Joseph narratives. 1) Joseph begins the story as a recipient of a robe from his father ; he ends the story bestowing robes on his brothers, especially Benjamin. He has become “father” to his brothers…
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