Just as Christians are not to “grieve as others do who have no hope,” neither are we to rage as those who do not know the one true God. Continue reading →
Twenty Affirmations And Exhortations For Christian Citizens
Christian Life
Three AI Challenges
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is rapidly developing. It’s hard to keep up with some of the new ethical challenges Christians are facing. Especially our young people are being bombarded with all kinds of tempting new possibilities for distraction, entrapment, deceit, and apostasy. . . . Continue reading →
Contentment For Sojourners And Exiles? The Call Of 1 Peter 1:13
The apostle Paul that we meet in the pages of Scripture did not appear to have many things going for him. Height? Not so much. Public speaking ability? Ask the Corinthians. More importantly, Paul’s missionary life was full of suffering, by which Paul learned and passed on a lesson as he proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ and the beautiful inheritance of the saints in light: “I have learned,” he writes, “in whatever situation I am, to be content” (Phil 4:11). Continue reading →
Heidelcast: Superfriends Saturday: Addressing Church Councils that Disagree with the Reformed Confessions | Will God Forgive Me for Adultery?
It’s a Superfriends Saturday on the Heidelcast! Continue reading →
The Tender Love A Father Has: The Christian’s Comfort, Even In Death (Part 4)
In our previous installments in this series, we have explored our culture’s discomfort with death, noting it as God’s judgment on sin, yet also observing that Scripture offers a wonderfully tender perspective. We discussed how believers, by God’s grace, escape the second . . . Continue reading →
Heidelcast: Superfriends Saturday: Adult Children Who Have Fallen Away From the Faith | When a Pastor’s Convictions Change
It’s a Superfriends Saturday on the Heidelcast! Continue reading →
Review: Raging With Compassion: Pastoral Responses To The Problem Of Evil By John Swinton
One of the oldest and most repeated religious questions goes like this: “Why does God allow evil to happen?” Or it may sound like this: “Why is there evil in the world?” These types of questions fall under the subject of theodicy. . . . Continue reading →
How Presbyterians Shifted On Church-State Relations
I am not suggesting that American Presbyterians of the eighteenth century would approve of the political arrangement of the twenty-first century. Surely, in many respects they would not. They assumed an overwhelmingly Protestant nation where Catholics and (more so) Jews could be . . . Continue reading →
The Tender Love A Father Has: The Christian’s Comfort, Even In Death (Part 3)
In our previous installments in this series, we began by considering the great aversion and discomfort our culture has when it comes to death. We noted the various unhealthy, unbiblical, and unhelpful coping mechanisms that are often employed in the face of . . . Continue reading →
Ryle: They See The Bait But Not The Hook
It is truly lamentable to observe how many young men and women, of whom better things might have been expected, fall away into semi-Romanism in the present day, under the attraction of a highly ornamental and sensuous ceremonial. Flowers, crucifixes, processions, banners, . . . Continue reading →
The Tender Love A Father Has: The Christian’s Comfort, Even In Death (Part 2)
In our previous article in this series, we observed that our culture is not one that likes to think about death. Culturally, as others have pointed out, we have done away with the traditional churchyard. No longer are we forced to walk . . . Continue reading →
Women Are More Than Baby Machines
But I did feel the swell of hormones that flooded my system for the next three months, bringing me to lows I didn’t know existed, sweeping me through endless forests of my own fatigued emotions. I felt the fraying of my mind . . . Continue reading →
Pastors Need Friends
A pastor is a human being who has been redeemed by God’s grace and called to serve the Lord as an ordained minister. As a human, he will need and want friends. It is a highly unrealistic expectation to think that pastors . . . Continue reading →
Vos: The Law Given To Israel Was A Reflection Of The Covenant Of Works
There is still another area in which the Reformed view of the law is influenced by the idea of the covenant. Even after the fall, the law retains something of its covenantal form. The law was not included in the federal relationship . . . Continue reading →
PCA Christian Nationalism Study Committee Announced
Kevin DeYoung, moderator of the 52nd General Assembly, has selected the elders to serve on the Ad Interim Study Committee on Christian Nationalism. The committee will consist of three teaching elders, four ruling elders, and two advisory members. The committee members are . . . Continue reading →
What You Consider Traditional Worship Is A Modern Innovation
To be fair, congregational singing has been under assault for a century or more. The “contemporary” worship of 100 years ago in some P&R churches already suffered from invasive species propagated by Oxford Movement’s high-church, Anglo-Catholic tendencies. Low churches got high. Organs . . . Continue reading →
Calvin: Do Not Make An Idol Of Me Or A Jerusalem Of Geneva
Now, as they did us injustice in that, it appears to me that you ought to have been too reasonable and humane to suffer us to be mixed up and implicated in their follies. One of them, of whom I had heard . . . Continue reading →
A Critical Appreciation Of Anglicanism (Or Why I Did Not Become Anglican)
Regular readers of this space will know that evangelical elements of the Anglican tradition have played a significant role in my spiritual development. As a very young Christian the first piece of Christian literature of any substance that I read was John . . . Continue reading →
Re-Thinking Thomas On The Effects Of Sin
One of the most common critiques of Thomas Aquinas to be found in contemporary Protestant theology and apologetics is that Aquinas either outright denies the noetic effects of sin (that is, the effect of original sin on the human intellect) or at least minimizes . . . Continue reading →
Warfield On Calvin’s Doctrine Of The Natural Knowledge Of God
The first chapters of Calvin’s “Institutes” are taken up with a comprehensive exposition of the sources and guarantee of the knowledge of God and divine things (Book I. chs. i.-ix.). A systematic treatise on the knowledge of God must needs begin with . . . Continue reading →