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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Federal Vision

Zacharias Ursinus & the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousnes

While I think Zacharias Ursinus’ thinking would be profitable to consider, I am not recording his reflections in order for readers to come to agreement with his position as a whole. Rather, my interest is twofold. First, I think the way the Heidelberg Catechisms is used as a “proof” of…

by Mark HorneJune 5, 2006
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Covenant

Does the New Covenant have its own distinctive sanctions as well as blessings? We affirm

On this question Hebrews 10 is quite clear and really needs no additional argument. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume…

by Mark HorneMay 21, 2006
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Biblical Horizons

FV, NPP, PCA, AAPC, ETC.

Not all readers of this essay letter may be aware of it, but a tempest has been brewing in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a tempest created by the liberal party in that denomination. It came about this way. In January 2002, a Pastor’s Conference on covenant theology was…

by James B. JordanAugust 5, 2005
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Biblical Horizons

The Closing of the Calvinistic Mind

Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years. But let me elaborate. When I became a Calvinist, back in 1970, I bought a bunch of books. Over the next few years,…

by James B. JordanAugust 5, 2005
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Ephesians

The Centrality of Preaching

CHRIST THE PREACHER How Ephesians Shows Us Why Preaching is Essential to Salvation & Sanctification Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a…

by Mark HorneJune 5, 2005
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Baptism

Baptismal Theology Within Reformed Evangelicalism

Tracking the informal shifts in Protestant opinion regarding Baptism can be a difficult business. For example, in 1849 Anglican clergyman William Goode published his defense of Evangelicalism against the Anglo-Catholics under the title, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of…

by Mark HorneMay 29, 2005

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Evangelical Alternative Medicine

C andy Gunther Brown's The Healing Gods is an effort to explain how Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) “entered the American cultural mainstream,” and especially how it achieved “a niche among evangelical and other theologically conservative Christians, although much of CAM is religious but not distinctively Christian and lacks scientific…

March 3, 2017

Spiritual Healing

I n her editor's introduction to Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing , Candy Gunther Brown observes: “According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals (2006), more than a quarter—and in many countries two-thirds—of the world’s 2 billion Christians identify themselves…

March 3, 2017

Tolerant Calvinism

I n an essay on the Brandenburg Calvinist pastor John Bergius, Bodo Nischan observes that “ Unlike most Protestants and Catholics at the time, Bergius did not think that a ruler should impose his religion on his subjects. True faith, he argued, could never be forced on people,” and he…

March 3, 2017

What Might Have Been

R obert Carle suggests that “sensible refugee policy will balance two competing realities: first, it is a moral duty for a wealthy country like the United States to help displaced and suffering people; and second, not everyone who wants to immigrate to the United States can come to live here.”…

March 3, 2017

Sub Species Aeternitatis

J ohn Milbank writes, “ Since life passes and is only mediated through memory and desire, every concrete instance of life is always also something other than itself, part of a larger, dimly-imagined reality, disclosed only partially.” Thus, “a ceaseless passing and a ceaseless dying is the very condition of…

March 3, 2017

Universal v. Universal

“W estern history is not, John Milbank argues, an evolutionary progress away from religion and toward human freedom and control.” It should instead be seen as “the history of a tremendous revolt against either particularism or the cult of universalizable power, in the name of the transcendent Good.” This revolt…

March 3, 2017

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