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Federal Vision

The Covenant of Works: The Mosaic Covenant & the Necessity of Obedience for Salvation in the Day of Judgment

When someone expounds the way of salvation found in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms and in the easily-accessible writings of the Reformed heritage, he often finds him embroiled in a debates about the covenant of works and the Mosaic Covenant. One is “proven” to be aberrant by allegations that one…

by Mark HorneMay 29, 2005
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Baptism

Rome Won't Have Me

The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of course, because it means that all the…

by Rich LuskOctober 24, 2004
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Federal Vision

Mixing “Law” & Gospel in the Abrahamic Promise: A Response to Michael Horton

One of the odd features of Michael Horton’s version of Covenant theology is his interpretation of the covenant God made with Abraham 1 in Genesis 15. According to Horton, The very way in which God made the covenant with Abraham (putting him to sleep; walking through the torn animals by…

by Mark HorneSeptember 22, 2004
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Mark

The Victory According to Mark

What was I trying to do, when I wrote my book on Mark’s Gospel ? Fundamentally, I wanted a book that would change readers by making them better readers of the Gospel of Mark. My ideal reader is not someone who goes to the book to use as a resource…

by Mark HorneSeptember 7, 2004
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Baptism

Sacramental Assurance & the Reformed Faith: The Biblical Perspective of the Westminster Standards

Why do we need sacraments? According to the Westminster Confession, sacraments were instituted by Christ “to confirm our interest in him” (27.1), “to strengthen and increase” the “faith” of those within the Covenant of Grace and “to distinguish them from those that are without” that covenant (Westminster Larger Catechism, #162).…

by Mark HorneSeptember 3, 2004
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Isaiah

“What More Could I Have Done?” | Some Thoughts on the Mystery of Divine Sovereignty and Covenant Responsibility

In Isaiah 5:1-7, we have a typical covenant lawsuit, in which the Lord accuses his people of rejecting his grace and mercy. It is not my intention here to exegete the entire passage, or to look at the way the vineyard image used here serves as a metaphor in other…

by Rich LuskJune 7, 2004

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Philosophy

Structuralism’s nihilism

A discarded fragment from a larger paper. Structuralism arose from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. He distinguished between the langue, the system of a language, and the parole, the particular utterances of a language. There is a circular relationship between them, since no parole makes sense unless there…

March 4, 2006
Philosophy

Structuralism’s nihilism

A discarded fragment from a larger paper. Structuralism arose from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. He distinguished between the langue, the system of a language, and the parole, the particular utterances of a language. There is a circular relationship between them, since no parole makes sense unless there…

March 4, 2006
Philosophy

Descartes’ city

Margaret Jacobs summarizes what she describes as “one of the most powerful metaphors in the Discourse : Descartes repudiates the wisdom of the ages, comparing it to those ‘old cities’ build on the foundations of ancient and medieval ruins. With a vision one imagines as shaped by the ordered and…

March 3, 2006
Philosophy

Descartes’ city

Margaret Jacobs summarizes what she describes as “one of the most powerful metaphors in the Discourse : Descartes repudiates the wisdom of the ages, comparing it to those ‘old cities’ build on the foundations of ancient and medieval ruins. With a vision one imagines as shaped by the ordered and…

March 3, 2006
Philosophy

Descartes, Melville, and the Nihilism of Modernity

That’s quite a weighty title for a small thought. Melville’s Ahab says that the world is nothing but a pasteboard mask, and all the colors of the world, its variety of shapes and its beauties, are nothing but a harlot’s painting on a more essential blankness, a whiteness like the…

March 2, 2006
Philosophy

Descartes’ Hermeticism

Some paragraphs from an illuminating paper by Michael Allen Gillespie concerning Descartes’ links with Rosicrucians: “The Rosicrucians were essentially a Hermetic society that sought to understand the hidden order of nature in order to gain power over and through it. Agrippa, for example, wrote in 1655 that for ‘a magician…

March 2, 2006

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