During a recent trip to the mall I looked up to see a large sign over a store declaring, “True Religion.” Yikes! Of course it got my attention and, I admit, it made my dead orthodox pulse race just a little. These . . . Continue reading →
This gallery contains 5 photos.
In unguarded moments, the young men I work with acknowledge their disengagement, and more than that, they articulate a confusion and even ambivalence about what it means to be a man. They can make jokes about traditional male identity until the cows . . . Continue reading →
Can the Church commit itself to becoming more serious, more—may I say it?—devout, a little more courageous, a little less crowd-pleasing, a little less self-preoccupied, and a little less comfortable? Can the Church become the Church as it is supposed to be? . . . Continue reading →
Although not particularly popular, either in our present secular milieu or in bearing our present ecclesiological amnesia, I continue to believe that having, holding, and requiring a confession is good for us. In short, a confession is good for our health, even . . . Continue reading →
“For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to . . . Continue reading →
No truth today seems more self-evident in our culture than the fact that God is love. But this is not understood in its biblical setting where John immediately defines the nature of this love by saying that Christ was sent “to be . . . Continue reading →
We live in a time when telling the truth is not fashionable, when it’s considered a little gauche (unsophisticated, awkward) to speak the truth plainly. More than that it’s considered a little old-fashioned to talk about truth at all. As far as . . . Continue reading →
The Holy Spirit has sometimes been described as the forgotten member of the Trinity. Whether that is true it is important to recognize the Spirit’s role in progressive sanctification, that gradual, gracious renewal to the image of Christ. He is the Spirit . . . Continue reading →
Just when one might have thought that the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement(s) might be waning—they aren’t getting any younger—comes a piece in last Friday’s New York Times by Mark Oppenheimer on the Calvinist revival among evangelicals. Of course it begins with TULIP . . . Continue reading →
In earlier generations simplicity was regarded as an indispensable aspect of an orthodox doctrine of God. Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists all confessed that God is “without parts” and the Belgic Confession even made divine simplicity its opening affirmation: “We all believe . . . Continue reading →
Revisionism isn’t always a bad thing. I am a revisionist myself. I’ve been trying to help people see the history of Reformed theology rather differently from the way it was often presented from the middle of the 19th century through the 1970s. . . . Continue reading →
Ryan at Sola Gratia raises a question that many first-semester seminary students ask. In essence the question is this: Before I came to seminary I had an active devotional life and a vital, immediate, experience of God and now things have changed. . . . Continue reading →
In preparing to reach CH601 (Ancient Church) this fall, I’ve been reading a lot of primary and secondary texts that I’ve not read or that I’ve not read for a long time. One of the more interesting has been Simon Gathercole’s book, The . . . Continue reading →
From the end of 2008 to 2013 I was the lead teaching pastor of a large non-denominational church in the northeast. During my time there I was told by various elders to lead the church in a more “broadly evangelical” direction. By . . . Continue reading →
A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading . . . Continue reading →
Attack 1: You’re intolerant–you reject me just because I’m different from you. Reply: Let’s be honest with each other. We both know you’re the one who rejects what is different from yourself. You reject the challenge of the other sex. Attack 2: . . . Continue reading →
If possible, I wish to raise an alarm without being an alarmist. The Reformed theologian, J. H. Alsted (1588-1638) said that the doctrine of justification is the article of faith by which the church stands or falls. Of course he was only . . . Continue reading →