Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One striking aspect of the recent “Federal Vision” conflict in the various conservative micro-Reformed groups is a debate over what older theologians really meant and said. Examining the credentials of various people who speak with great assurance on these matters one sees repeatedly degrees in church/theology history studies. In fact,…
The Worship of the English Puritans by Horton Davies really valuable book for gaining historical perspective on the American Presbyterian scene. (I will note for the record that I don’t believe there is an objective definition for “puritan” and I wish historians would stop using it and instead speak of…
This is the conclusion to Frame’s discussion about historical/covenantal election in his The Doctrine of God (pp. 329-30): Historical election and eternal election are distinct, but they cannot be entirely separated. Note the following: 1. Both historical and eternal election are aspects of God’s saving purpose. The election of Israel…
From John Frame’s The Doctrine of God : So although the election of Israel is by grace, there is an important place for continued faithfulness. Individuals can belong to the chosen people, yet lose their elect status by faithlessness and disobedience. Branches can be broken off “because of unbelief” (Rom.…
I’ve recently re-discovered an awesome theological resource, The Westminster Shorter Catechism Project . It is excellent, not least because it demonstrates the healthy diversity that has always been allowable in the Reformed Tradition until recently. For example, consider the sources attached to Question and Answer #94: Q: What is baptism?…
A friend recently asked if the frequent saying of the Pledge of Allegiance was a sign of American jingoism, or an attempt to inculcate “nationalism” of a bad sort. It seemed to him as a Canadian that that might be the case. That seemed to me to be probably backwards,…
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Mead says clock time and calendar time is time only “in a manner of speaking.” He also argues that clock and calendar time is not “absolute” but relative to one’s frame of reference. True that, as my kids say: “Monday” spells gloom within the framework of a certain organization of…
George Herbert Mead focused his thought on temporality (especially in Philosophy of the Present ), and particularly on “time in” events and roles rather than time as a background of events. Time in the strictest sense is the moment of present emergence that reflects into the past and changes its…
Nobel chemist Ilya Prigogine’s work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility, Barbara Adam argues, not only challenged particular scientific laws but the classical notion of a scientific law. In classical physics, to arrive at a law was to arrive at a timeless substructure of natural reality. Adam summarizes the…
Barbara Adam says that the time of clocks is “an idea in practice,” and elaborates: “as a material expression of a particular understanding of the natural world, in which time is conceptualised through motion without change, as a spatial quantity which is infinitely divisible into units, which can be numerically…
Since Lewis Mumford and Max Weber, historians and sociologists have recognized the importance of the Benedictine monastery in the development of time-keeping, scheduling, and Western notions of time in general. Zerubavel notes that in developing their regulated common life, the Benedictines deliberately broke with the natural and temporal rhythms of…
We’re used to thinking of privacy in terms of protected spaces, and often hear comments about how isolated individuals and families are in modern society. A guy opens his garage door remotely so his Lexus can slip into the garage, and the door is closed before he’s out of the…
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