I was once a churchless evangelical. As a young Christian I attended a medium-sized (300 member) SBC (Southern Baptist) congregation for a few years without joining. It wasn’t really a problem. Of course they would like to have seen me baptized (as . . . Continue reading →
The question is not whether reason is the instrument by which or the medium through which we can be drawn to faith. For we acknowledge that reason can be both: the former indeed always and everywhere; the later with regard to presupposed . . . Continue reading →
UPDATE: Here is the audio from Thursday’s chapel message on John 1:1-3. § One of the things I learned from reading Ned Stonehouse was to ask the question: what does this narrative/passage/text say? In our defense of the essential unity of Holy . . . Continue reading →
Jesus is an intentionally troublesome figure. He said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This was an outrageous claim when it made it and remains so today. . . . Continue reading →
Since the garden humans have faced the temptation to listen to an authority claiming to compete with God’s authority. Since the beginning voices have questioned, “has God really said?” Since the beginning voices have raised doubts about whether there is really one . . . Continue reading →
[226] The special qualification of the second person in the Trinity is filiation. In Scripture he bears several names that denote his relation to the Father, such as word, wisdom, logos, son, the firstborn, only-begotten and only son, the image of God, . . . Continue reading →
One of the most basic doctrines of the New Testament is that Jesus is God the Son and the Son of God. In Matthew 4:3 we read when “the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, . . . Continue reading →
In part 1 we took a quick trip through the fundamentals of Christology: one person, two natures. Any doctrine of Christ that confuses the two natures (Eutychianism) or that makes them into two persons (Nestorianism) is heresy. It denies fundamental, biblical, catholic . . . Continue reading →
We are considering how we understand the language of the Apostles’ Creed, when we say, “only begotten Son” and how we explain it in our catechism. In Question 33 we say: 33. Why is He called God’s “only begotten Son,” since we . . . Continue reading →
In some quarters of the patristic church and widely in the medieval church the line between God as the Creator and humans as the created became blurred. One of the more important but often overlooked accomplishments of the Reformation was to recover . . . Continue reading →
Reformed Christians are understandably ambivalent about the Virgin Mary. On the one hand she was truly blessed. God graciously ordained that she should bear in her womb God the Son, that she would be what the Definition of Chalcedon (451) called the . . . Continue reading →
We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul . . . Continue reading →
Whereas our Savior is frequently, in Scripture, call’d the Son of God, the Socinians deny that he is so call’d with respect to his Eternal Generation, or being Begotten of his Father before all World’s; as also they deny that his Divinity . . . Continue reading →
Scripture has a great deal to say about wisdom. The words wisdom or wise occur about 400 times in the Bible. Yet, both in and outside the visible church, ours is not an age that is characterized by that same interest in . . . Continue reading →
In part 2 we looked at what it means to speak about God being just and about justice. In this last installment we need to consider what it means to speak of truth and the truth of God. During his interrogation of our . . . Continue reading →
Therefore, one can also say that the sacraments have sealed to Christ what is depicted in them for the elect. The Father promised and assured Him that, on the basis of His merits, everything represented in the sacraments would occur in the . . . Continue reading →
He rose the same person, the same Jesus Christ, very God and very man, which had died; he rose according to the nature in which he had suffered, which was his human nature, his true human nature, the very same which it . . . Continue reading →
X. While Christ remained on the earth, however, his body was not advanced to that full perfection of glory, which it has possessed ever since its exaltation above the heavens. From condescension to the weakness of the disciples, he suffered it to . . . Continue reading →
Be4 I sign off learned a new word in church today: Eschatology. Anyone? — Katie Couric (@katiecouric) December 1, 2014 Couric, a television host took a lot of heat for admitting that she did not know what “eschatology” means. That’s unfortunate because . . . Continue reading →
[399] But a great many Reformed theologians believed otherwise and answered the above question in the affirmative. In their opinion, the answer to Christ’s prayer (John 11:42; Heb. 5:7) and especially the entire state of exaltation from the resurrection to his coming . . . Continue reading →