Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast; MDiv, Westminster Seminary California) is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a member of the of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, associate online instructor in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, a visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and author of Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction. You can read more from him at Pastor Perks.
The time when I felt closest to death was years ago as I was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, trying to get back to shore. The trouble occurred while I was still a long distance from shore and felt this horrible . . . Continue reading →
Crossway’s series about famous theologians on the Christian life has covered centuries of church history to help us see how some of the church’s brightest lights have offered insight about how to live faithfully and be well-equipped before the Lord. In this . . . Continue reading →
Everybody loves a good inspirational poster. One of my favorites is the picture of the single flower sprouting through the garbage in a landfill with the caption, “Hope grows in a dump.” The idea is that the prospect of good things can . . . Continue reading →
Trick or Treat! Continue reading →
Philosophy and the way that we frame issues has always played an important role in expressing the truth. We have an “apparatus” to our thought. We use certain conventions to be able to articulate what we mean even in theology. Whether we . . . Continue reading →
Authenticity is the banner of our time for what is supposed to be good. The notion is that striving for conformity to any norm outside of ourselves means we are not genuine. That view results in antagonism toward every stable aspect of . . . Continue reading →
The principles of covenant theology unify the Bible’s story about God redeeming a people for himself. Even though we have to read our Bibles well to discern the doctrines of covenant theology, in return covenant theology helps us to read our Bibles . . . Continue reading →
This year, 2025, marks the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, which is the whole Christian church’s most foundational statement about the Trinity. Protestants (of the sound varieties), Roman Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox all share agreement that the doctrines coming from . . . Continue reading →
Although biased as a Birminghamian, I think that southerners have great skill for developing words that are most helpful and useful to get at realities of life. Y’all is perhaps our most famous. But another highly useful one is comeuppance. This word . . . Continue reading →
The eleventh hour. Continue reading →
Is the church’s Bible also the academy’s Bible? Although we might even ask what this question means, Michael Legaspi argues that the Bible as Scripture is different than the Bible of the academy. In this respect, he indicates a gap between uses . . . Continue reading →
Certain phrases tend to get my attention, and one of them is, “Are you even paying attention to me?” It is one line that, at least in home life, signals that I appear to be focused somewhere other than where my attention . . . Continue reading →
Believers were already judged at the cross (Gal 2: 19-20), so there is no future review of our works—no slideshows of our failures before the heavenly court—to determine whether we truly measure up. Harrison Perkins | Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction, . . . Continue reading →
Genesis is a massive book of Scripture that has long captured the Christian imagination. Its opening few chapters alone have sparked more discussion and have motivated more explanation and commentary than even some other Old Testament books. It contains some of the . . . Continue reading →
Meet the teacher. Continue reading →
Psalm 17 is about focusing on satisfaction in God even amid our greatest troubles. We find the psalmist here in great distress, calling to God to vindicate him against the wicked. Psalm 17 records his prayer declaring that he was in the . . . Continue reading →
“Keep your eye on the prize.” “Don’t take your eye off the ball.” We say these sorts of things for situations when we know that focus is extremely important. We miss hitting the ball when we are looking elsewhere than the pitch . . . Continue reading →
God cannot let sin go unpunished (Rom 3:25). The penalty for sin… is not a matter of God’s feelings, as if He is simply angry about being wronged…. death is the legal and just consequence for sin, ‘the curse of the law’ that . . . Continue reading →
Building a fire requires balancing. Specifically, you have to balance the use of kindling with the use of longer burning fuel. Kindling gets hot and bright fast, but it also fizzles quickly and fades. Fire has to be fed by sustaining fuel. . . . Continue reading →
Young, Restless, and No Longer Reformed is about Austin Fischer. No matter what the author’s intent was, it is hardly a book about theology and is very much a work arising from Fischer’s feeling that he has far more to say and . . . Continue reading →