R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
The concept of a worldview is essential. Derived from the German Weltanschauung, the English noun denotes “a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.”1 Worldviews are like belly-buttons. Everyone has one. Continue reading →
The pressure to slouch toward Las Vegas is strong this year. Super Bowl parties abound. Who wants to be the odd ball who declines the invitation? Christians are strangers and aliens (1 Pet 2:11; Heb 11:10). Continue reading
Last time we saw that the very reason Calvin adopted the language of a “twofold kingdom” (i.e., the doctrine that God’s kingdom is one and administered in two distinct spheres) was to oppose the Libertines and Manichaeism. But it remains to be . . . Continue reading →
It is a widely held belief among a relatively large number of Baptists and not a few Presbyterian and Reformed (P&R) folk that Baptists can be Reformed. Indeed, it is widely held among those in the Baptistic traditions that they (as distinct . . . Continue reading →
Easy-going. Very easy going. Continue reading →
James Bond, Agent 007, had a “license to kill.” There are Reformed folk who also seem to have a license of some sort or other, based on what they call “the Christian world and life view” (hereafter, CWLV). This concept is interesting . . . Continue reading →
On the assumption that we in the West live in what Aaron Renn calls a “negative world” (i.e., a culture that is predominantly hostile to Christianity, that Christendom is never to return, and that various forms of neo-Paganism are likely to fill . . . Continue reading →
The Reformation brought about a significant shift in theology, piety, and practice of parts of the Western church. One theological shift, which was evident in aspects of the practice of the Reformed church, was its insistence that the church was a distinct, . . . Continue reading →
The socially conservative evangelicals do not have a doctrine of a twofold kingdom; nor do they typically distinguish between nature and grace or between the sacred and the secular. Thus the only way they can cooperate with Roman Catholics on social questions is to get them converted and baptized. Continue reading →
God the Holy Spirit worked so powerfully among the apostles (Acts 5:12) that people came to think their ill would be healed if they were laid on cots so that the apostle Peter’s shadow fell on them (Acts 5:15). Through the apostles, . . . Continue reading →
The post-apostolic Christians understood what Jesus and Paul were teaching about the kingdom. They confessed universally, in the Rule of Faith, from the earliest decades of the second century, that God is “almighty” (omnipotens). They did battle with radical dualists, whether Gnostics . . . Continue reading →
One link led to another, and I happened recently upon the website of a large NAPARC congregation. As I often do, I looked to see who the pastor was. That link led me to a list of pastoral staff who coordinate a . . . Continue reading →
MacArthur is right to observe that too many evangelicals have no place for good works in their account of the faith. The question is not whether there is a “relationship between faith and works,” but rather what that relationship is.216 According to . . . Continue reading →
It is repeatedly argued (especially on social media) that unless one affirms that Christ exercises his dominion over all of life in the same way then one has denied Christ’s lordship. Of course this way of arguing assumes what it has to . . . Continue reading →
Back in May 2007, Carl Trueman raised the problem of the pressures females feel in conservative evangelical and Reformed churches. This issue raises the question of how Reformed Christians ought to relate to the broader culture. How do we live in a . . . Continue reading →
The formal question of the Protestant Reformation was that of authority: What is the principal source of authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life? The Roman communion claimed that the church produced the Scriptures and thus the authority of the . . . Continue reading →
In volume three, where Owen begins his commentary proper on the text of Hebrews, he makes illuminating remarks on Hebrews 3:1–2, about how he understood the movement of redemptive history and the comparison and contrast that Paul makes in Hebrews between Moses . . . Continue reading →
Gomer goes under cover. Continue reading →
We live in the desert. It is not the sort of cactus-filled desert where Snoopy’s brother Spike lives (that is east of us a few hours) but it is desert nonetheless. That means water is at a premium and people respond by . . . Continue reading →
Between 1513 and 1519, as he lectured through the Psalms, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and the Psalms again at the University in Wittenberg, Martin Luther (1483–1546) not only became an Augustinian anti-Pelagian in soteriology (sola gratia); in that same period he also recovered . . . Continue reading →