A Wonderful Illustration Of The Necessity Of An Objective Definition Of Reformed

Recovering the Reformed Confession

Trevin Wax and David Fitch have been in a dialogue in which each of them has published a post expressing appreciation for the other’s tradition. Wax identifies as Reformed and Fitch as Anabaptist. The reader can draw his own conclusions as to . . . Continue reading →

What Is Your Line In The Sand? (Updated)

I am not certain what it means but pastors resort to military analogies with surprising frequency. One of them is the metaphor of “dying on a hill.” The image is that of a marine charging up a hill or fighting to hold . . . Continue reading →

Why Love Is Not A Mark Of The True Church

I was listening to a podcast recently in which someone remarked that Reformed churches can be “cold.” In my first pastorate I had an elder who used to joke that, in the days before refrigeration, “they used to build the Reformed church . . . Continue reading →

What The Spirit Is Doing Or What We Are Saying? Distinguishing Reformed And Pentecostal Piety

What happens is that contemporary evangelical and charismatic folk describe ordinary phenomena in extraordinary, apostolic terms. They identify non-apostolic phenomena as apostolic. That is cheating but it is rhetorically powerful and persuasive. Many evangelicals do not want to live in the post-canonical, in between time. It is a drag. People want a power religion. Judged against the neo-Pentecostal and charismatic claims, Reformed Christianity seems decidedly weak and powerless (see all of 2 Corinthians). Continue reading →

What The Spirit Is Doing Or What We Are Saying? Distinguishing Reformed And Pentecostal Piety

Introduction Since the early 19th century American Christianity has been largely dominated by a revival of the original Anabaptist theology, piety, and practice. One can transpose much of what took place in the 19th century over the first generation Anabaptists (1520s) and . . . Continue reading →

Review of J. I. Packer, Puritan Portraits

J. I. Packer is a significant figure in a variety of circles. He is one of the last voices representing that generation of British evangelicalism that had roots in the Reformation, that was articulate, warm, and evangelical in the best sense of . . . Continue reading →

Nicole: What Happened To Amyraldianism?

France. As may be gathered from the above account, the influence of Amyraut was constantly on the increase between 1637 and 1659. At first, only a few provinces and the Church of Paris supported him, and there was resolute opposition in many . . . Continue reading →

Nicole On Phase Two: Opposition To Amyraut Builds

In 1641, Amyraut took the pen to defend Calvin’s view of reprobation, which had been severely criticized in an anonymous work. In this volume, titled Doctrinae J. Calvini de Absoluto Reprobationis Decreto Defensio, Amyraut took occasion to reassert covertly his main positions . . . Continue reading →

Burying The Lead On Baxter

There is a phrase in journalism called “burying the lead” (or, since about 1979, the cloying variant lede). The lead (lede) is the paragraph in which the most important, salient facts are contained. In the old days (c. 1975), the writer was . . . Continue reading →

Bavinck: Amyraldianism A Species Of Rationalism

In Calvin, these two perspectives are still connected with each other, but in Reformed theology they soon split apart, and both developed in a one-sided direction. Under the influence of Socinianism and Remonstrantism, Cartesianism and Amyraldism, there sprang up the neonomian view . . . Continue reading →

Charles Hodge Contra Amyraut

According to the common doctrine of Augustinians, as expressed in the Westminster Catechism, “God, having … elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring . . . Continue reading →

Owen Contra Amyraut On Covenant Theology

A learned man of late, out of hatred unto the Spirit of prayer, or prayer as his gift, hath endeavoured to deprive the church of God of the whole benefit and comfort of this promise (Amyrald. Præfat. in Psal.) for he contends . . . Continue reading →