The Pope a Protestant?

About once a week, the Bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), holds a ” general audience” in St Peter’s Square in which he gives instruction (catechesis) to Roman Catholics. In three of the more recent of these catechetical audiences he has . . . Continue reading →

Reformed Orthodoxy on John 15

The FV has appealed to no other text as frequently or as misguidedly as they appeal to John 15, as if it were patent evidence of their view of temporary, historical, conditional union with Christ effected by baptism. Todd has a nice . . . Continue reading →

Vos on Justification and Union with Christ

Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949) was a Dutch Reformed theologian who taught at the theological college of the Christian Reformed Church (later Calvin Seminary) and most famously at Princeton Theological Seminary. Though typically neglected by mainline (i.e., liberal and Barthian) writers because of his . . . Continue reading →

Does Baptism "Save"?

Merrit asks this question: “Two friends and I have been talking about this verse (1 Peter 3:21) and passage for quite some time today. The more we seem to talk about it the more confused I seem to get about it.

What is Definitive Sanctification and is It Reformed?

Nick wrote under another post to ask about this doctrine. I first learned about the doctrine of definitive sanctification from Bob Strimple’s lectures on it in the early-mid 1980s in seminary and then from two short essays by the late John Murray. . . . Continue reading →

A "Decisive Break with the Ordo Salutis Thinking": A New Perspective on Union with Christ?

Consider this quotation from William B. Evans, Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology. Studies in Christian Thought (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 264-65:

Online: "The New Perspective on Calvin"

This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece of research by the Rev Tom Wenger (MA, Historical Theology), a graduate of Westminster Seminary California on the way Calvin is being presented in some contemporary Calvin scholarship. This piece grew out of his 2003 . . . Continue reading →

Office Hours: Union with Christ

Office Hours talks with John Fesko, Academic Dean and Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at WSC, about his new book: Beyond Calvin: Union with Christ and Justfication in Early Modern Reformed Theology (1517-1700). There is some confusion about the Reformed doctrine . . . Continue reading →

Semi-Pelagianism and Faith as the Instrument of Existential-Mystical Union with Christ (Pt 1)

William Perkins (1558-1602), in his 1595 Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, on the question of effectual call, wrote: Againe, if the Vocation of every man be effectual, then faith must be common to all men either by nature, or by grace, or . . . Continue reading →

Semi-Pelagianism and Faith as the Instrument of Existential-Mystical Union with Christ (Pt 2)

Last time we saw that, according to William Perkins, semi-Pelagianism asserts that the will (or other faculties) are able to operate in salvation partly on the basis of nature, i.e., they are not entirely dependent upon grace. In contrast, the Reformed argue . . . Continue reading →