(HT Russell Moore) A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital. The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that. If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages o...

Question:  What is Covenant Theology? Answer:  Covenant Theology isn’t so much a ‘theology’ in the sense of a systematic set of doctrine as it is a framework for interpreting Scripture.  It is usually contrasted with another interpretative framework for Scripture called Dispensational Theology, or Dispensationalism.  Dispensationalism is currently the most popular interpretative grid for Scripture in American Evangelicalism, and has been so from the latter half of the 19th century on through to the 21st century; but Covenant Theology remains the majority report for Protestantism sinc...

Wild dogs probably devoured the crucified body of Jesus, a liberal biblical scholar announced several years ago, but it was not his infidelity about the Resurrection that was so rattling. Christianity has battled such claims since the perjured testimony of the guards at Jesus’ tomb. More distressing was the scholar’s image of Jesus’ body as food for scavenging carnivores. This image is disturbing for a reason, and it points toward a problem for Christianity that is more ancient and more problematic than the naturalistic assumptions found in modern biblical criticism or in the reigning Da...

Hebrews 1:2 tells us that in these “last days” God has spoken to humanity “by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he created the world” (cf. Col. 1:16; 1 Cor. 8:6). Jesus’ role as co-creator with God is a familiar doctrine. But in v. 3 there’s something that’s a bit odd: “He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God.” What’s strange about the phrase isn’t its meaning. We get the metaphor. Jesus “shines forth” the glory of God; He is a brilliant reflection of what God is like. What’...

I’ve been asked quite a lot about and ponder a bit about what are the essentials and non-essentials of Christianity. I’m often reminded of the Latin phrase in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas. Translated into English, this means, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” This phrase (often wrongly attributed to Augustine) comes from an otherwise obscure German Lutheran theologian of the early seventeenth century named Rupertus Meldenius. It has served as a place holder for a sort of Evangelical Credo (statement of f...