I continue to learn theology at one of our local malls. Last fall I learned about True Religion. More recently I was at Eddie Bauer. Upon putting away the store receipt I happened to notice a little blurb on the back titled, . . . Continue reading →
Perhaps it may be objected that if we continue to be tolerated, we shall harm the church by an insistence upon the maintenance of a strict view of its doctrinal standards. I think that just from the “Liberal” point of view there . . . Continue reading →
All this is true. But it really does not apply to the situation in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The point is that that Church is very largely dominated by unbelief. It does not merely harbor unbelief here and there. No, . . . Continue reading →
Some of my friends in the CRC seem to think that this would be a good thing. They speak to me with wistful longing about the “freedom” of the PCUSA. This is a romantic vision that is unrelated to the truth. The . . . Continue reading →
Recently I’ve been stressing to my students the importance of believing their senses. Maybe it’s because each autumn I re-read the Apostolic Fathers (and other patristic writers) and walk the students through the threats posed by Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion (pre-Gnostic, Gnostic, . . . Continue reading →
The mentality of fundamentalism sometimes crops up where one would least expect it; and there is no better illustration of this than the inimitable New Testament scholar, J. Gresham Machen. Machen was an outspoken critic of the fundamentalist movement. He argued with . . . Continue reading →
There several ways to classify American denominations. We could distinguish between “liberal” (those who no longer believe Scripture to be God’s inerrant Word or the historic Christian faith) and “conservative” (those who affirm inerrancy and historic Christianity). As Darryl Hart argues in . . . Continue reading →
THE present situation in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. is only one phase of a situation that prevails in the Protestant churches throughout the world. Everywhere—in the countries of Europe and in mission lands—Christianity finds itself in a mighty . . . Continue reading →
One way of accounting for the decline of churches into liberalism is to find the villains and tell the story of how the bad guys snuck into the church and corrupted an otherwise pure institution thereby stealing it from under the noses . . . Continue reading →
Among the Followers of Karl Barth (d. 1968), both evangelical and mainline (and especial Among the Followers of Karl Barth (d. 1968), both evangelical and mainline (and especially among evangelicals in the mainline) it is sometimes assumed that Barth’s theology was and . . . Continue reading →
Recovering the Reformed Confession I described the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (along with the CRC) as a part of the “borderline” (as distinct from the mainline and the sideline). At the time, the CRC appeared to be moving toward the mainline (which trajectory . . . Continue reading →
As he spins in his grave. Why? The Church of Scotland has adopted a “joint liturgy for the re-affirmation of baptismal vows” with the Roman Catholic Church. Craig Brown, writing in The Scotsman reports, “As a result, Scotland has the first Protestant . . . Continue reading →
It’s been long enough since the fundamentalist-modernist controversy that much of evangelicalism has coalesced or become indistinguishable from the old liberalism. The old lines between “liberals” and “conservatives” are fuzzy. Many in the mainline are unaware of the sideline or of the . . . Continue reading →
A December 7, 2009 report from the Barna Group details the continued slide of the mainline churches (i.e. the American Baptist Churches in the USA; the Episcopal Church; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Presbyterian Church (USA); the United Church of . . . Continue reading →
Donald A. Luidens is a sociology prof at Hope College and he’s written a provocative and interesting essay in Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought (which I think is descended from the old Reformed Journal) in which he argues that loss of . . . Continue reading →
The Church of Scotland was recently convulsed by a controversy over the call of a practicing homosexual minister. According to a recent news report it appears that the Church of Scotland has more trouble with her ministry (HT: John Bales). One suspects . . . Continue reading →
News from the GR paper.
I continue to learn theology at one of our local malls. Last fall I learned about True Religion. More recently I was at Eddie Bauer. Upon putting away the store receipt I happened to notice a little blurb on the back titled, . . . Continue reading →
One of the major reasons I wrote Recovering the Reformed Confession was to call attention to a weird sort of two-way traffic. Some in the Reformed Churches in North America and apparently in Scotland seem ready to abandon the very thing that . . . Continue reading →