During the Watergate hearings, Senator Howard Baker asked, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” However important that question was in the politics of 1973, it remains an important question in theology today. A friend writes to ask . . . Continue reading →
QIRC
Reformation Day 2023: Now More Than Ever
As I write there is a major land war ongoing between Russia and Ukraine, Israel has suffered a horrific terrorist attack by Hamas and is facing a two-front war with Hamas to the South and Hezbollah to the North as she seeks . . . Continue reading →
Heidelminicast: Muether Explains The Attraction Of Theonomy
John Muether explains the attraction of theonomy. Continue reading →
Post-Millennialism And The Promise Of “Victory”
Nothing has been more characteristic of current post-millennialism than its emphasis on the kingship of the ascended Christ; nothing fires the Postmil vision more than that reality. Yet it is just this reality that post-millennialism affectively compromises and, in part, even denies. . . . Continue reading →
Let Us Not Have Another Harold
We are living in a time when the consciousness of the end of the world not only grips the community of faith, but also the world at large. Political and economic chaos characterize our news reports, and the recent applications made in . . . Continue reading →
Did Providence Stop Working After 1633?
Recently a regular reader of this space and a valued correspondent wrote to ask about these movements and how we should think about them and especially about those who argue that the Westminster Confession requires orthodox Reformed Christians to reject the practice of textual criticism in favor of those texts that were extant at the time of the Westminster Assembly. Continue reading →
Not To Worry. Christ Is Still Lord. Nothing Has Changed
Another Christian musician has announced that he has “deconstructed” his faith. Continue reading
Cultural Transformation Is Not The Article Of The Standing Or Falling Of The Church (But Justification Is)
Within the last two weeks or so it has been asserted by some, in a letter to a congregation, that the doctrine of cultural transformation is a matter of Reformed orthodoxy and that anyone who dissents from what this letter describes as the “Kuyperian” tradition, which is a little over a century old, is “outside” of Reformed orthodoxy. Continue reading
The First Great Awakening: “A Confus’d But Very Affecting Noise”
It is difficult to imagine. Jonathan Edwards countenancing the “Confus’d, but very Affecting Noise” that erupted in Suffield, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1741. Yet there he stood, his loud voice rising in prayer above the din that emanated from an assembly of . . . Continue reading →
Some Reasons Why Visitors Do Not Stay And What To Do About It
Presbyterian and Reformed congregations occupy an odd space in American Christianity. We do not really belong to American Christianity in significant ways. Our roots are not in the nineteenth-century revivals nor even in the eighteenth-century revivals. We are no part of the . . . Continue reading →
Are Confessions Themselves QIRC-Y?
A correspondent to the Heidelblog writes: …I have been living in the Heidelblog lately, and have been challenged to rethink so many previous convictions. Thank you for this resource! I especially have been edified by the QIRC/QIRE idea, but thinking through it . . . Continue reading →
On The King James Only Movement, The Majority Text, And Text Criticism
Preface As a young Christian, as I was beginning to study Greek and to learn the Reformed theology, piety, and practice, I could see the textual apparatus in the footnotes of my copy of the Greek New Testament but I could not . . . Continue reading →
The State Of Evangelical Theology 2020: The Crisis Deepens
For a few years now Ligonier, in conjunction with Lifeway, has been conducting surveys of Americans (and others) to track the state of American Christianity. They want to know, as they write, what “Americans believe about God, salvation, ethics, and the Bible.” . . . Continue reading →
With The Laymen’s Lounge Podcast: What Are Proper Expectations For the Christian Life?
Jason Estopinal is the host of the podcast and he writes: “It’s been said that for fish that living under water, with all they’ve ever known is underwater living, and all the other fish around them also only know underwater living—that these . . . Continue reading →
Why I Will Not Follow Mark Galli Across The Tiber
The phrase “swimming the Tiber” is a metaphor for converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. I have not been able to determine its origins but the online Dictionary of Christianese traces the expression to 1963, which, if true, would mean that it . . . Continue reading →
QAnon, Evangelical Gnosticsm, Manichaeism, And The Kingdom Of The Cults
In the early 2nd century one of the gravest threats faced by the early Christians was a movement that we know as Gnosticism. It thrived by radically revising Christianity. According to the Gnostics, the material world is evil, the Creator God of the . . . Continue reading →
Just Discovering Reformed Theology? TheoRecon Is A Toll-Booth You Should Skip
Introduction Arguably Reformed theology has never been more popular among evangelicals than it is right now. There are multiple large parachurch movements that extol the virtues of Reformed theology in a way that was unknown thirty years ago. It has never been . . . Continue reading →
Heidelcast 135: Calls About Bears, Corporate Repentance, Revoice, FV, And A Poll (UPDATED)
I am interrupting the series on the doctrine of God again to do the call-in show I have been promising. With this episode, you the listener get to vote on the Heidelblog. You tell me which call you liked best and I . . . Continue reading →
More Conference Audio: Biblicism Versus Sola Scriptura
Here is the fifth installment of the audio from the conference, So You You Say You Want A Reformation? hosted by Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, MA. This is one of the Saturday morning talks, on aspects of the QIRC (quest . . . Continue reading →
With No Compromise Radio On The Lordship Controversy, QIRE, And The Reformation
In anticipation of the upcoming conference, So You Say You Want A Reformation? Mike Abendroth and I discuss some of the topics we will be considering this Friday and Saturday: law, gospel, and the confusion of the two, the Lordship Salvation controversy, . . . Continue reading →