Theologia et Vita

The Shepherd Argument for the Deity of Christ J Neil Daniels  From the earliest days of the church, Christians have confessed that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. Yet throughout history, detractors have questioned the New Testament’s witness to Christ’s deity, often alleging that Jesus never claimed to be God. One powerful response lies in the way Jesus appropriates Old Testament titles and roles reserved exclusively for Yahweh. Among these, the imagery of the Shepherd is especially striking. Premise 1: Yahweh is the Shepherd of His people. Scripture consistently identifies the LORD (Yahweh) as Israel’s Shepherd. David confesses, “The LORD is my Shepherd” (Ps 23:1). Similarly, in Ezekiel 34:11–15, Yahweh declares that He Himself will seek His sheep, rescue them, feed them, and give them rest. The role of Shepherd is not delegated—it belongs uniquely to God in His covenantal relationship with His people. Premise 2: Only God is good in His essential nature. When ...

The Jesus-Was-Married Myth  J. Neil Daniels There’s a peculiar little cottage industry that springs up every few years—the claim that Jesus secretly married, usually to Mary Magdalene, and sometimes (if the imagination really runs wild) had children. You’ve seen the paperbacks in the airport bookstore, or maybe the slick documentaries with ominous background music. It’s always framed as a shocking revelation the Church tried to cover up. And yet, when you actually dig into the sources, it’s hard not to feel like we’re dealing with smoke without fire. Maurice Casey, who was no conservative apologist but a sharp-minded historian, puts it bluntly: “Jesus is not said to have married, nor are any children recorded. It is therefore virtually certain that he did not marry, and absolutely certain that he had no wife at the time of his ministry, and that he never had any children.” That’s about as straightforward as historians get. No hedge words, no coy suggestion of mystery—just the plai...

Fritz Erbe: Anabaptist Conscience and Reformation Persecution J. Neil Daniels Nota Bene: A "Deep Dive" audio overview is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WjwgAZPzURZ4YuBAHbkdsO0bZ5tZxuC7/view?usp=drivesdk Beginnings in Thuringia In the rolling hills of Thuringia, in the small village of Herda near Eisenach, lived a farmer whose name would never have been remembered apart from the stubbornness of his conscience. Fritz Erbe was not a theologian, nor a nobleman, nor even a wandering preacher. He was a peasant, and yet his story cuts to the heart of the Reformation’s contradictions: the simultaneous promise of freedom and the fierce impulse to control it. The year was 1531 when he was first arrested for undergoing baptism upon his own confession of faith—an act that placed him immediately among the outcasts branded “Anabaptists,” that is, those who dared to reject infant baptism and insisted on believer’s baptism instead. The village of Herda lay in the Eisenac...

The Ibex and the Impossible Wall J. Neil Daniels There’s a video—maybe you’ve seen it—of Alpine ibex scaling the almost sheer face of the Cingino Dam in northern Italy (see one such video on YouTube here ). Concrete, slick, not built for animals, yet there they are, mothers and kids picking their way upward as if gravity had suddenly relaxed its grip. The dam stands 160 feet high. One false step would mean certain death. But they don’t misstep. They climb with an ease that borders on the supernatural. People often shake their heads in disbelief when they see it. A goat? On vertical concrete? And yet this is not an accident, not a lucky trick of a nimble goat caught on camera. It’s an expression of design written into the very body of the ibex, honed down to its hooves, its tendons, even its reflexes. Hooves Like Masterwork Tools An ibex hoof is a marvel in miniature. At first glance it looks like a blunt split hoof, not unlike that of any domestic goat. But get closer. The outer ri...

Faith as an Organon Leptikon  J. Neil Daniels The Reformers often described faith as a beggar’s empty hand, a striking image captured in the phrase organon leptikon . Faith, they insisted, is not something we produce; it contributes nothing to our justification. It does not strive, calculate, or earn. It simply reaches out, wide-eyed and unworthy, to receive the gift God freely offers. Paul makes this crystal clear in Romans 4:5 (LSB): “But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” There’s a certain scandal in that, isn’t there? That God’s grace does not wait for us to tidy up our lives, but comes to us in our mess. This imagery is more than a quaint metaphor; it’s rooted deeply in Scripture. Consider Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:3: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Children don’t calculate their worth or earn their place—they receive. ...

Brief Thoughts on Method  J. Neil Daniels When it comes to historical theology, the way we go about the work often makes or breaks the outcome. You can have all the zeal in the world for truth, but if the method is crooked, the conclusions will be bent as well. This is why the first tools that ought to be picked up are inductive and abductive reasoning. They’re not glamorous, but they are steady. Induction gathers the raw material before rushing to judgment, and abduction hunts for the most fitting explanation when the data feels messy or incomplete. Put plainly: they keep us honest. And honesty in this field begins by listening— really listening—to the voices of the past. That means slogging through Augustine’s winding sentences, Calvin’s relentless logic, or Edwards’s peculiar blend of philosophy and piety. It can be tiring, yes, but there’s no substitute for hearing an author in his own cadence. The temptation is always there to take a shortcut, to let someone else do the hard ...

Facing the Other Fairly J. Neil Daniels One of the temptations of theological debate is the shortcut: relying on critics of an opposing view rather than hearing the voice of the other side itself. It is far easier, after all, to read John Jewel’s polemics against the Council of Trent than to trudge through the Latin decrees of the council itself. But the risk of that kind of secondhand engagement is obvious. We end up contesting caricatures rather than arguments, dueling with straw rather than oak. And so, if we are to be honest interlocutors, we must go to the sources—painfullu tedious though it may sometimes be. Take Origen, for instance. Eusebius preserves fragments, Jerome passes judgments, later scholastics pull at his reputation like vultures at a carcass. But one only begins to grasp the restless brilliance and the occasional recklessness of Origen’s thought by opening De Principiis itself, noting where the Greek gives way to Rufinus’ Latin, and even where manuscript variations...

James Quiggle’s Ordo Salutis : A Theological Appraisal J. Neil Daniels  Introduction Theology has never been content simply to affirm that God saves sinners. From Augustine’s careful reflections on grace, through the medieval scholastics, and down to the Reformers and their successors, the church has pressed hard into the question of how salvation unfolds—what is the inner logic of God’s eternal decrees and their historical execution. The technical phrase ordo salutis emerged to give structure to these discussions, a shorthand for the logical order of divine actions leading to human salvation. Debates about the ordo have been especially intense within the Reformed tradition, where precision about God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility has always been cherished. James Quiggle’s 270-page 2024 volume Ordo Salutis: The Way of Salvation is an ambitious attempt not only to revisit the traditional categories of supralapsarianism, infralapsarianism, and sublapsarianism, but als...

What Does "Not by Faith Alone" (James 2:24) Mean? J. Neil Daniels  The phrase “not by faith alone” in James 2:24 has always had a way of ruffling feathers. It cuts across the grain of the Reformation’s rallying cry— sola fide —and at first blush sounds like James is tearing down Paul’s whole edifice of justification by faith apart from works. But context matters, and the two apostles were not sparring in the same ring. Paul was fencing with legalists who thought circumcision and Sabbath-keeping could curry favor with God. James, on the other hand, was correcting the lazy presumption of those who thought that nodding in God’s direction, without lifting a finger in obedience, was somehow “faith.” Two different diseases, and therefore two different prescriptions. Once you start looking closely, you see the key terms don’t quite overlap. Paul’s “faith” is always more than mental assent; it is trust, reliance, clinging to Christ as the only hope. For him, that kind of faith natura...

 A Lack in Christ's Afflictions? Thoughts on Colossians 1:24 J. Neil Daniels Paul’s words in Colossians 1:24 sound jarring at first glance—almost scandalous, really. “I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” Lacking? As if the Son of God didn’t suffer enough? That can’t be right, and Paul surely knew it. The entire New Testament rings with the note of completion: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Hebrews insists Christ offered Himself once for all, a perfect sacrifice that doesn’t need supplements or edits. So we’re left scratching our heads—if the cross is complete, what on earth could Paul mean? The answer seems to lie not in Christ’s redemptive suffering but in the ongoing afflictions faced by His people. Sometimes Paul used “Christ” in a collective sense, embracing the whole body of believers (1 Cor. 12:12). In that light, “Christ’s afflictions” are not Golgotha revisited but the daily bruises and burdens that fall on those who belong to Him. Think less Calvary, m...

Self-Defense and the Christian: A Biblical and Theological Examination J. Neil Daniels Introduction Few topics ignite more debate within Christian circles than the question of self-defense. Bring it up at a Bible study or a church fellowship meal, and the responses will range from impassioned pacifism to emphatic defenses of the Second Amendment. For some, the words of Christ—“turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies”—seem to settle the matter in favor of nonresistance. For others, the biblical commands to protect the weak, defend the oppressed, and uphold justice imply a moral responsibility to resist violence, even with force if necessary. The issue is not simply practical but deeply theological. How are believers to follow the Prince of Peace while living in a fallen world filled with violence and injustice? Does Christian discipleship forbid protective violence, or does it sometimes require it? This essay will explore the biblical, theological, and historical dimensions of self...

Gary Michuta's Treatment of Luther and the Protestant Biblical Canon: A Critical Analysis J. Neil Daniels Introduction The question of biblical canonicity remains one of the most enduring sources of theological dispute between Protestant and Catholic traditions. Gary Michuta’s Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger: The Untold Story of the Lost Books of the Protestant Bible (first edition, 2007; second revised edition, 2017) stands as a contemporary Catholic apologetic seeking to defend the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books while attributing their removal from Protestant Bibles primarily to the influence of Martin Luther. Michuta devotes over twenty pages (twelve in the main text and ten in an appendix) to scrutinizing Luther’s position on the Apocrypha. Yet a closer analysis of his treatment reveals significant methodological flaws and historical inaccuracies that ultimately undermine his central thesis concerning Luther’s motivations and influence. Michuta’s Central Argument A...

Franco Burgersdijk on the Impossibility of Accidents Without a Subject: A Reformed Scholastic Critique of Transubstantiation J. Neil Daniels I. Introduction The clash over transubstantiation was never merely a quarrel about bread and wine. It was, at its heart, a debate about ontology—about what it means for something to be, and to be what it is. By the early seventeenth century, the Council of Trent’s decrees (1551) had already hardened Catholic dogma: in the Eucharist, the substance of bread and wine is transformed into Christ’s body and blood, while the accidents—taste, color, smell, extension—remain, miraculously sustained without their subject. For Protestant theologians, this was not only a theological corruption but also a metaphysical monstrosity. Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635), professor of philosophy at Leiden, became one of the sharpest scholastic critics of this doctrine. Educated during the university’s golden age—when Dutch intellectual life rivaled the great Cathol...