Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Imagine driving up to Canada and stopping at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. While you’re sitting at the table, an enthusiastic young man comes over to you and says in an excited voice, "Are you an American?" You reply, "Yes, I am." "Wonderful! I have so little…
1 O Lord Almighty, God of our fathers, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous posterity; 2 You who have made heaven and earth with all their order; 3 who have shackled the sea by Your word ofcommand, who have confined the deep and sealed it with…
Part 1: 1When King Astyages was laid with his fathers, Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom. 2 And Daniel was a companion of the king, and was the most honored of his friends. 3Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day they spent on it twelve bushels…
This debate has been going on for some time. But with few exceptions, almost all explanations of Presbyterian church polity claim that a “church” (meaning a single local congregation) must be ruled by “a plurality of elders” of whom one may happen to teach and work full-time doing so. This…
I hope that those who are advocating reading more of the ancient, "classical" literature of the ancient, "classical" world, are also promoting the Apocrypha. I’m afraid that many Christians don’t realize what great literature much of the Apocrypha is. It is not, of course, inspired by God, and perhaps because…
PRESBYTERIANISM is a term referring to a system of government in the Church. It is commonly contrasted with Congregationalism and Episcopalianism. Presbyter is a Greek word that is translated as “elder” in our English New Testaments. Thus, Presbyterianism is commonly defined as “rule by elders.” This is a misleading definition.…
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The Reformed Orthodox were entirely correct to discern a fundamental threat and challenge in the spread of Cartesianism, especially as regards the relation of philosophy and theology. But it’s hard to read about their responses without sadness. “Whatever reason brings out of its stinking heaps must be subordinate to the…
On the one hand: Method is a discipleship - a “following after.” And the Cartesian methodus is in conflict with the “following after” demanded of a Christian disciple. Here, Descartes offers a different way, a different truth and life. The Christian “method” of knowledge and wisdom is discipleship, not doubt…
Bizer again, on Melchior Leydekker’s summary of the Cartesian critique of Reformed orthodoxy: “The Cartesians reproach the orthodox to the effect that their theology is not scriptural, that they have re-introduced Catholic scholasticism into the Church; that they hinder every advance in knowledge and their work does not have scientific…
At several points, Bizer notes that the Reformed orthodox critics of Cartesian philosophy and its application to theology formulated their arguments to buttress their opposition to Lutheran ideas of the real presence. Peter van Mastricht “resists the proposition that God could do something contradictory; one of the reasons for this…
Reformed Orthodoxy failed to stop the spread of Cartesian philosophy, despite vigorous efforts. Why? Bizer suggests that the orthodox critique often adopted much of what it criticized. In Martin Schoock’s notorious response to Descartes, “there is no word . . . about the fact that the Cartesian proof of God…
Johannes Cocceius, a father of biblical theology, would seem to have little in common with Cartesian rationalism. But most of the Cocceians in the latter part of the 17th century were Cartesians. Ernest Bizer (in an article entitled “Reformed Orthodoxy and Cartesianism”) suggests that there was an affinity between the…
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