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Beloved Enemies: Israel’s Irrevocable Calling between Dispensationalism and Progressive Covenantalism

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Beloved Enemies Israel’s Irrevocable Calling between Dispensationalism and Progressive Covenantalism J. Neil Daniels Abstract Romans 11:28 predicates enmity and belovedness of the same people at the same moment, and the correlative μέν … δέ makes that simultaneity a grammatical datum rather than a theological inference. This essay builds the case for a future for national Israel on that verse and on its ground in 11:29, then locates the resulting position between revised dispensationalism and progressive covenantalism. It concedes that ὁ Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ in Galatians 6:16 most probably denotes the church, argues that the concession costs the position nothing, and declines the dispensational sine qua non that treats the Israel-church distinction as a premise rather than a consequence. The christological grounding is developed from the union of Davidic and divine sonship in the incarnate Son: promise escalates in Christ without evaporating. Objections drawn from Romans 9:6, from...
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The Verse Arius Loved

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There was a passage which Arius could give to any catechumen and thus cause the entire room to go silent: "But concerning that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32). In this statement the Son is speaking about himself and drawing a distinction between what he knows and what the Father knows. In response the Nicene party quoted Colossians 2:3, which says that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ, and this reply is satisfactory in that respect. Yet it does not address the more difficult issue. Although Colossians 2:3 might claim that the Son is omniscient, Mark 13:32 still upholds its original assertion, and every orthodox commentator from the fourth century onward has had to offer an explanation as to how both statements can be included in the same Bible. The pressure stems from the structure of the verse and not from any single word; Jesus establishes an ascending sequence: at first ther...
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Defending the Motte, Living in the Bailey

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  A motte is the stone tower on its mound, hard to take and miserable to live in. The bailey is the courtyard below, comfortable, productive, exposed. Nicholas Shackel, in 2005, saw two arguments in one castle. The bailey is the claim someone actually wants to hold and act on, contested and difficult to defend. The motte is a shrunken, near-unarguable version of it. Press the bailey and the arguer retreats uphill to the motte, defends that successfully, and the moment you withdraw, walks back down and reoccupies the courtyard as though it too had been vindicated. The move trades on an ambiguity nobody names aloud. Two propositions get one label. When the strong one draws fire, the weak one answers the door, and the strong one collects the credit. Nothing about the bailey is ever proven. The defender just refuses to stand in it long enough to be hit, then treats the intact motte as if it covered the whole estate. You have felt this without having a word for it: you refute what was...
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Rejoice, Propitiation of All the World? A Reflection on the Akathist Hymn and Marian Devotion

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Each year during Great Lent, Orthodox Christians gather for an hour to sing a hymn of praise to the Theotokos, Mary, using words originally meant for her Son. In the third stanza of the Akathist Hymn, the faithful call her "Rejoice, propitiation of all the world," echoing 1 John 2:2, where Christ is identified as "the propitiation for our sins... and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." The hymn does not just borrow this title—it directly applies it to Mary, which captures the core of the theological tension involved. This pattern of transfer continues throughout the hymn. Christ is the ladder in John 1:51, yet Mary is praised as "the heavenly ladder by which God came down." The Key of David, which belongs to the one who opens and no one shuts (Revelation 3:7), is given to her as "the Key of the Kingdom of Christ." The rock and manna of 1 Corinthians 10:4, which are identified as Christ Himself, are wrapped around her in the...
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The Acceptable Way: The Regulative Principle of Worship and the Ordered Freedom of the Church

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The Acceptable Way The Regulative Principle of Worship and the Ordered Freedom of the Church J. Neil Daniels Abstract Reformed and evangelical Christians who confess the same doctrine of Scripture worship in strikingly different rooms. Behind the difference lies the regulative principle of worship, the conviction that the gathered church may do in worship only what God has authorized. This essay traces the principle from Calvin through the Puritans to the Baptists, sets out the biblical arguments the Westminster divines and later Reformed dogmaticians have used to establish it, and works through the modern controversy running from John Frame's expansion of the principle to all of life, T. David Gordon's ecclesiological rebuttal, R. J. Gore's charge that the Puritan account is unworkable, and Samuel Waldron's confessional defense. It weighs the relation between the principle and sola scriptura, answers the leading objections, and names the abuses that attend the do...
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