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Church Calendar

Five Misconceptions of Reformation Day

For many people the date October 31 is significant not only for being the Eve of All Saints (All Hallows Eve, Halloween) but as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. These theses were a list of…

by Timothy LeCroyOctober 31, 2017
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Church Calendar

Concerning Halloween

It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter. "Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint,"…

by James B. JordanOctober 26, 2017
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Revelation

Preaching, An Art of Division

The following is an excerpt from Peter Leithart's forthcoming two-volume commentary on Revelation (T&T Clark). Y ou must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings,” a voice tells John (Rev. 10:11). Then someone gives him a “reed like a rod” and instructs him to measure (11:1).…

by Peter LeithartOctober 24, 2017
josiah-death

Back To Egypt

Josiah is an ideal Davidic king in many ways. He not only “did right,” but he “walked in the ways of his father David” and “did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (2 Chronicles 34:2). At the age of 16, he began to seek Yahweh, and…

by Peter LeithartOctober 19, 2017
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Augustine

Augustine and the Music of Time

One of the best discussions of Augustine’s views on time comes from Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music, and Time (ch. 3). Following Paul Ricoeur, Begbie claims that Augustine’s distentio “is conceived as the three-fold present, and the threefold present as distentio . The distentio consists in the non-coincidence of the mind’s…

by Peter LeithartOctober 17, 2017
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How to Worship

The Psalter Should be Woven into the Fabric of Worship

This has always been the position of the Christian Church, and from an historical perspective the present situation in evangelicalism is appalling. The early liturgies of the Church, which are still used in Episcopal and Lutheran worship, are laced with psalm phrases. The early hymns, such as the Te Deum…

by James B. JordanOctober 12, 2017

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Dualist Apocalyptic?

Ryan Leif Hansen doesn't think it's accurate to say that apocalyptic depictions of evil are “dualistic” ( Silence and Praise ). At the very least, the kind of dualism needs to be specified. Hansen writes, “evil is the result of a resistance to divine rule and order, and a transgressing…

December 17, 2015

John Knox

John Knox's influence on the modern world has been enormous. He shaped the Scottish Reformed church, and so shaped the faith and culture of the corners of the world to which Scottish Reformed missionaries and pastors spread. Yet, it's been nearly thirty years since we've seen a major biography. As…

December 17, 2015

The Common-Sensical Berkeley, 2

Berkeley is an anti-abstractionist. What is abstraction? Berkeley is basically taking on Locke, who argues (in Berkeley's telling) that our process of thought works something liek this: We have a particular thing that invariably has a combination of qualities. But those qualities are abstractions. We can see resemblances among things:…

December 16, 2015

Along the Trail of Trade

According to TLS reviewer David Morgan, Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads is the fruit of teenage dissatisfaction with world history: “Frankopan tells us that as a teenager he became increasingly dissatisfied with the version of history he had been taught: essentially the ‘Rise of the West,' in which Greece led…

December 16, 2015

Walking the Walk

The gospel is all about teaching us to walk. Once we walked, zombie-like, in death and sin (Ephesians 2:1), but God raised us in Christ to walk in good works ( 2:10). We used to walk like the Gentiles, in darkness and dissipation, without God in the world. Now that…

December 16, 2015

Dickensian Typology

Dickens's Hard Times takes place in Coketown, a coal mining town, focused on a small cluster of characters. There’s Gradgrind, a leading citizen and MP and education reformer. The Gradgrind children, Tom and Louisa, have both been trained according to Gradgrind’s modern educational methods. Bounderby is the manager of one…

December 15, 2015

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