Piety and Practice

One Great Difference Between A Covenantal Piety And The American Conversionist Alternative

by on April 24, 2018 | 26 Comments

Make no mistake. No one comes to new life and true faith apart from the sovereign, gracious, mysterious, wonderful work of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who hovered over the face of the deep (Gen 1:2) also gives new life to dead (Eph 2:1–4) sinners. You must be born again (or from above). The mistake comes when we identify that fact with a particular experience of praying a prayer, walking the aisle, or making a decision for Christ. We should all rejoice when someone is brought to new life, even if through irregular means (e.g., a Billy Graham Crusade or the like). It is not our business to tell the sovereign, free Holy Spirit where and when he may work. It is our business, however, to pay attention to what he has told us, in Scripture, to do and say and he tells us to pay attention to the “revealed things” which are “for us and for our children forever” (Deut 29:29). Scripture tells us that the Spirit ordinarily operates through the preaching of the gospel. Continue reading →

The “Opium Of The People” And The Opioid Crisis (2)

by on March 29, 2018 | 7 Comments

The late-modern period is a a time of disillusionment in the West and perhaps nowhere else is that disillusionment more acute than in America where, since at the least the early 20th century, the false promises of Modernity (human perfectibility, the universal . . . Continue reading →

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

Or Why I Wrote Recovering The Reformed Confession

by on January 10, 2018 | 4 Comments
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

by on November 26, 2017 | 2 Comments

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

by on November 22, 2017 | 12 Comments

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 →

What The Spirit Is Doing Or What We Are Saying? Distinguishing Reformed And Pentecostal Piety

by on April 24, 2016 | 7 Comments

What happens is that contemporary evangelical and charismatic folk describe ordinary phenomena in extraordinary, apostolic terms. They identify non-apostolic phenomena as apostolic. That is cheating but it is rhetorically powerful and persuasive. Many evangelicals do not want to live in the post-canonical, in between time. It is a drag. People want a power religion. Judged against the neo-Pentecostal and charismatic claims, Reformed Christianity seems decidedly weak and powerless (see all of 2 Corinthians). Continue reading →

Heidelberg 118–119: We Ask For All Necessities

by on August 29, 2015 | 1 Comment

I grew up on the Plains. It is not easy for Plainsmen to ask for help. The Plains are the home of rugged individualism, which was a very useful trait for settlers who turned over ground for the first time. Farms were . . . Continue reading →