Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Some of the key ways Biblical writers draw attention to important details in their stories are by the use of key words, repetition, and structural devices like chiasms and parallel constructions. The Bible sounds different, even odd, to us sometimes because of the use of these and similar literary conventions.…
It is pretty standard in conservative Christian circles to condemn unbelief for pretensions of “autonomy.” Cornelius Van Til famously (at least among those of us who knows who he is) said that “There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.” Greg Bahnsen appealed to this quotation by labeling…
Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever taught — the Light of the World, whose pure Truth brought sight to the blind (John 9). Almost no one — even those who speak openly against Him — disputes His reputation as a wise and good teacher of the way of love.…
It is clear that the events in Esther are an integral part of the history of the formation of the Restoration Covenant Era. Amalek attacks. Amalek is spoiled. The spoils are used to build the Temple, in the sense that the crude Temple of Zerubbabel can now be glorified with…
It is not coincidental that John Calvin speaks most strongly in defense of vernacular language just after his defense of singing in church. "From this also it plainly appears that public prayers must be couched not in Greek among the Latins, nor in Latin among the French or English, as…
In A Voyage Around the World , George Anson recounts the effects of scurvy upon an unfortunate man: But a most extraordinary circumstance, and what would be scarcely credible upon any single evidence, is, that the scars of wounds which had been for many years healed, were forced open again…
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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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