New Resource Page: Reformed Piety

Theology, piety, and practice— regular Heidelblog readers and Heidelcast listeners will be familiar with that formula. In classic and confessional Reformed Christianity these three things have always been understood to be intimately, organically related to each other. Our piety flows from our . . . Continue reading →

Searching For An Aid To Piety?

Tending to the means of grace in public worship every Lord’s Day should be at the top of the list for anyone who wants to improve his personal and family piety. Further, people who are committed to spending more time in Bible . . . Continue reading →

Criticizing Edwards On Religious Affections Does Not Lead To Dead Orthodoxy: There Is Another Way

In the wake of my latest essay, which cautions readers regarding Jonathan Edwards, has come questions about the role of affections and emotion in the Christian life. These questions signal how deep the Pietist tradition (see the resources below) runs in American . . . Continue reading →

Bavinck’s Critique Of Pietism

Like so many other efforts at reforming life in Protestant churches, Pietism and Methodism were right in their opposition to dead orthodoxy. Originally their intention was only to arouse a sleeping Christianity; they wished not to bring about a change in the . . . Continue reading →

Another Downside Of Pietism: Christ’s Bodily Resurrection Is Marginalized

If it does not care much about the Lord’s Supper (either to observe it or as to who communes) neither does it necessarily have a vital interest in the facts of the history of salvation. This tendency is plainly evident in two great figures in the history of Pietism, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918). Both were raised in the Pietist tradition and both abandoned historic Christianity. Continue reading →

Did Calvin’s Theology, Piety, and Practice Need To Be Rounded Out With Müntzer’s?

Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525) was a university-trained pastor and theologian. Martin Luther recommended him to be the pastor of St Catharine’s Church in Zwickau (117 km south of Leipzig). There he came into contact with three fiery souls, Nicholas Storch (c. 1500–25), Thomas . . . Continue reading →

Anti-Scholasticism, Revival(ism), Pietism, Or The Reformed Theology, Piety, And Practice?

Or Why I Wrote Recovering The Reformed Confession

Recovering the Reformed Confession

In recent weeks there has been a remarkable confluence of articles that, in their own way, are right on time. Let us start chronologically. In November John Frame reviewed James Dolezal’s excellent book, All That Is In God. In the course of . . . Continue reading →

On Still Small Voices And Allegories

One of the first things I learned when I became an evangelical Christian in 1976, the year America elected a self-proclaimed “Born Again” Christian (Jimmy Carter), was that every Christian should expect to hear a “still small voice” from God. I learned . . . Continue reading →

The Resurrection, Piety, And Pietism

And with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all (Acts 4:31). Perhaps since the rise of the late-medieval mystics, who desired nothing so much as to be absorbed . . . Continue reading →

With Janet Mefferd On The Social Gospel

Here’s today’s episode of Janet Mefferd Today in which we discussed the “social gospel,” Walter Rauschenbusch, the emergent/emerging church movement and what it means that evangelicals seem to be heading back to this well for inspiration. We also talked about some alternative . . . Continue reading →

Pietists And Rationalists Together

Some of the theologians of the era tended toward pietism or, among the Dutch Reformed, toward the Nadere Reformatie, and many evidenced affinities for the newer rationalist philosophies. Continue reading →

Good Old Fashioned Subjectivist Goo

In the 1920’s, J. Gresham Machen diagnosed not only the intellectual and theological drift of his day but of that which would continue to develop over the next 90 years. He wrote, The depreciation of the intellect, with the exaltation in the . . . Continue reading →

The Addiction to Religious Euphoria

Mark Galli (HT: Alex Webster) has an interesting story in CT Online  about the power of religious euphoria. He likens the attraction to, indeed the addiction to euphoria to attraction and addiction to a drug. Galli writes: We disdain faith that is . . . Continue reading →

The Importance of Being More Than Earnest

Doctrine. Theology. For many evangelicals these words are as pleasant as the phrase, “impacted tooth!” That theology is irrelevant to Christian life has essentially become a received dogma. Nevertheless, as much as indifference about Christian truth reigns among evangelicals, to the same degree . . . Continue reading →

Wilhelmus À Brakel On Pietism

Some years ago there was a sizeable movement among the Lutherans in Germany toward religiosity. Of some we believe that it was in truth, but with the majority it was but an illusion. This counterfeit religiosity has in some places also affected . . . Continue reading →