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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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Referees, Players, and Religious Liberty

I recently had an argument with my Lutheran brother concerning the subject of my forthcoming book, The End of Protestantism . The book is a plea to Protestants to pursue a deeper and wider unity within the church. My brother wasn’t convinced, and his response was severalfold: Lutherans aren’t going…

September 15, 2016

Jubilee

W illiam Johnstone points out ( 1 & 2 Chronicles , 1.15–16) that the Chronicler’s chronology “is related to the jubilee (Lev. 25:8–55): in the fiftieth year ‘you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family’ (Lev. 25:10). For C, the…

September 15, 2016

Stand, Serve, Sing

I t’s an ancient insight: Music tunes the soul. Music doesn’t just express what we’re feeling. It forms emotions. Emotions aren’t simply sensations. Emotions, as Robert Solomon has argued, are judgments about the world. Anger is a judgment concerning an outrage or injustice; fear is a judgment that a threat…

September 13, 2016

Sacraments and the Liberal Establishment

D avid L. Schindler ( Ordering Love ) exposes the “instrumentalism” that functions as the public philosophy of what he describes as the “juridical state,” an instrumentalism that he does not hesitate to describe as “violent” insofar as it excludes, in the name of fairness, any “ order of truth…

September 13, 2016

Liturgy and Totalizing Politics

I n his Political Worship , Bernd Wannenwetsch observes that “Worship again and again interrupts the course of the world. Through worship the Christian community testifies that the world is not its own. And this means also that it is not kept alive by politics, as the business of politics,…

September 12, 2016

Learning Like a Tudor

S cott Newstok urges students to learn like Shakespeare in a convocation address at Rhodes College . That means learning rhetoric: “in the Renaissance, rhetoric was nothing less than the fabric of thought itself. Because thinking and speaking well form the basis of existence in a community, rhetoric prepares you…

September 9, 2016

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