Some Reformed Churches Rejected American Slavery From The Beginning

The question before the Civil War, and even today for Americans as we consider our past and deal with contemporary racial issues is, “What does the Bible teach about American slavery?” Long before the Civil War, Reformed Presbyterians answered that both the custom of Christendom and the Bible condemned American Negro slavery as fundamentally wrong and immoral. It was based on manstealing, a sin against the eighth commandment and a capital crime under Mosaic Law. It rested on a racial line of separation that denied the Bible’s teaching that God made all men of “one blood.” Continue reading →

Bavinck: The Image Is Not In Man But Is Man

Now this splendid view of the image of God and of original righteousness has come more clearly into its own in the Reformed church and Reformed theology than in the Lutheran. In Lutheran theology the image of God is restricted to original . . . Continue reading →

Why Christians Need A Christian Doctrine Of Humanity

One neglected aspect of the story of Modernity has been the loss of a Christian anthropology. Along with its exile of God, Modernity has also been busily re-defining humanity with unhappy consequences. Through two world wars, abortion, genocides, “eugenics,” Communist purges, etc. . . . Continue reading →

Augustine’s Retractations, Perfectionism, And Fakespectations (2)

Secular institutions and even extra-ecclesiastical Christian institutions have always been, in their essence, law. The civil magistrate may exercise mercy—Calvin’s first published work was a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia (On Clemency), Seneca’s defense of the virtue of mercy to Nero. When . . . Continue reading →

Augustine’s Retractations, Perfectionism, And Fakespectations (1)

For a long time I have been thinking about and planning to do something which I, with God’s assistance, I am now undertaking because I do not think it should be postponed: with a kind of judicial severity I am reviewing my . . . Continue reading →

Calvin On The Image Of God In Man

In this way only we attain to what is not to say difficult but altogether against nature, to love those that hate us, render good for evil, and blessing for cursing, remembering that we are not to reflect on the wickedness of . . . Continue reading →

Lewis: Living In A Society Of Possible Gods

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, and to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you . . . Continue reading →

Killing Infant Humans Is A Crime

Kermit Gosnell has been convicted of the murder of three infant human beings. If you haven’t been following this story, Gosnell, according to Reuters, was “accused of delivering live babies during late-term abortions and then deliberately severing their spinal cords.” The jury . . . Continue reading →