We hold, also, that although we are baptized only once, yet the gain that it symbolizes to us reaches over our whole lives and to our death, so that we have a lasting witness that Jesus Christ will always be our justification . . . Continue reading →
HeidelQuotes
Dort: We Are Bound To The Scriptures As Confessed By The Churches Not To Private Opinions
Finally, this Synod exhorts all their brethren in the gospel of Christ to conduct themselves piously and religiously in handling this doctrine, both in the universities and churches; to direct it, as well in discourse as in writing, to the glory of . . . Continue reading →
Christ’s Resurrection Is Non-Negotiable
Without Christ’s resurrection, Christian hope disappears. Among many indispensable articles of our faith, Christ’s resurrection crowns the list. Part of the reason for its critical role is because we worship the risen Christ, who is God the Son in power with all . . . Continue reading →
Why Do You Seek The Living Among The Dead?
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the . . . Continue reading →
Chrysostom: The Church Has Always Connected Baptism And Circumcision
Nothing of ourselves. For remission of sins and adoption and unspeakable glory are given to us by Him. For he exhorts them no longer from the things to come only, but even from those now present. For consider. He said, that we . . . Continue reading →
Two PCA Pastors Arrested In Separate Cases
Two teaching elders from the Presbyterian Church in America are facing criminal charges in separate cases. The first case involves a pastor in Florida who was the driver in a fatal car crash. The second case involves a pastor in Mississippi who . . . Continue reading →
O. Palmer Robertson Against Intinction
Dipping the bread into the wine as a method of distributing and receiving the elements of the Lord’s supper is a matter that has recently come into discussion among some churches. This procedure, commonly called “intinction,” has significance in the life of . . . Continue reading →
J. K. Rowling’s Heroic Resistance To The Trans Movement Is A Model
I’m not a Harry Potter fan. But please don’t cancel me or stop reading. The reason I’m not an HP fan has little to do with overblown concerns about magic and spirits. Neither do I dislike the HP canon. It’s just too . . . Continue reading →
Goodwin: Children And Gentiles Are Included In The External Administration Of The Covenant Of Grace
The children of believing parents, at least their next and immediate seed, even of us Gentiles now under the Gospel, are included by God within the covenant of Grace, as well as Abraham’s or David’s seed within that covenant of theirs. Thomas . . . Continue reading →
Calvin: The Abrahamic Covenant And The New Covenant Are Substantially Identical
Both can be explained in one word. The covenant made with all the patriarchs is so much like ours in substance and reality that the two are actually one and the same. Yet they differ in the mode of dispensation. But because . . . Continue reading →
Calvin: Children Are Included In The New Covenant Because It Is Abrahamic
Yet Scripture opens to us a still surer knowledge of the truth. Indeed, it is most evident that the covenant which the Lord once made with Abraham [cf. Gen. 17:14] is no less in force today for Christians than it was of . . . Continue reading →
Zanchi: We Agree With The Ancient Church That Children Are Included In The New Covenant
We believe, with the whole ancient Church, that not only adults who have declared that they repent of their sins and believe in Christ, but also their little children, must be admitted to the sacrament of baptism, since the covenant also concerns . . . Continue reading →
Vermigli: The Reformed Accept The Children Of Believers As Members Of The Church
We do not exclude the children of believers from the church, but accept them as members, with the hope that they are partakers of divine election and have the grace and Spirit of Christ, even as they are the seed of saints. . . . Continue reading →
Turretin: Christ Included Children Into New Covenant
Because to infants belongs the kingdom of heaven according to the declaration of Christ: “Little children were brought unto Christ, that he should put his hands on them and pray” (Mt. 19:13*). Since the disciples would repel them, Christ said, “Suffer little . . . Continue reading →
Vos On Perserverance
If someone Reformed is asked on what his perseverance in the state of grace rests, then he will not answer, “On something in me, on the power and the capacity for withstanding of the new life that I possess,” but, “Solely on . . . Continue reading →
The “New Christian Right” Mirrors YRR?
We are now1 supposed to call the Online, Sometimes-Somewhat-Reformed Christian Nationalists and their assorted adjacencies the “New Christian Right” rather than the opprobrious but apt denominator “Woke Right.” Well, that’s fine—movements have the risky right to attempt rebranding. Remember “New Coke”? Nomenclature aside, we’ve noticed . . . Continue reading →
Bavinck: We Baptize Infants On The Basis Of The Covenant
Not regeneration, faith, or repentance, much less our assumptions pertaining to them, but only the covenant of grace gave people, both adults and children, the right to baptism. Continue reading →
Warfield: Covenant Theology Is Fundamental To Reformed Theology
The architectonic principle of the Westminster Confession is supplied by the schematization of the Federal theology, which had obtained by this time in Britain, as on the Continent, a dominant position as the most commodious mode of presenting the corpus of Reformed doctrine (so . . . Continue reading →
Francis’ Playbook For Church Growth Should Not Be Ours
Unless Pope Francis has been praying to Martin Luther for five weeks before his release from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, an extension for his reform movement is unlikely to raise cheers from the faithful. To be sure, if he wants to host more . . . Continue reading →
Where Are All The Women?
We are very reliably informed that a recent visitor to a PCA church circled all the names of the church’s officers in the printed worship bulletin and wrote, “Where are all the women?” on the page, which he or she duly folded and dropped in . . . Continue reading →