Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I appreciate Andy Webb’s recent entry into the current discussion over baptismal efficacy. 1 This is an issue which has consumed a great deal of time and energy in the Reformed world in recent years. It is not likely to subside soon. As a contributing party to the discussion, I…
The Covenant Vision of the Heidelberg & Westminster Catechisms Regarding Children and Baptism 7 POINTS ABOUT THE TEACHING OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death? Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but…
Is the Holiday Unpresbyterian? ‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others 1 ) claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to…
This month we begin by considering Alan D. Strange’s article, “Understanding the ‘Federal Vision'” published in the February 2007 issue of New Horizons, the official denominational magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Mr. Strange is an OPC minister, a teacher at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, and was a member of the…
There is no reason to believe that Matthew 24, Mark 13, or Luke 21 records Jesus prophesying about what is now known in Christian theology as “the Second Coming.” In my opinion, the fact that most modern conservative Christian scholars and pastors are not yet willing to acknowledge that the…
Francis Turretin, the Reformed theologian of the seventeenth century, carefully distinguishes the Reformed view of infant faith from Lutheran and Anabaptist claims. Anabaptists denied any faith to infants so that they could justify their refusal to baptize them. Lutherans affirmed (rightly) that covenant infants were believers, but made no distinction…
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In 1834, Heinrich Heine had predicted a revival of Germany that was not dependent on Christianity but on a return to the savage roots of German character: “Christianity, and this is its greatest merit, has occasionally calmed the brutal German lust for battle, but it cannot destroy that savage joy.…
1914 brought unity to a previously divided Germany. One pastor in Hanover wrote, “When the day of mobilisation had fully come, there were Germans all together in unity - villagers and city dwellers, conservatives and freethinkers, Social Democrats and Alsatians, [Hanoverian] Guelphs and Poles, Protestants and Catholics. Then suddenly there…
James Wood is one of the most public of our public atheists, but he has several bones to pick with other members of the brotherhood in a TNR review of Sam Harris’s latest book (TNR, December 18). He complains, for instance, against Dawkins’s use of Russell’s “celestial teapot” argument (ie,…
Playwright, novelist, and philosophy Michael Frayn offers this critique of David Deutsch’s claim that quantum mechanics implies multiple, perhaps infinite, worlds: “If only we knew what proportion of David Deutsches was putting forward each of these theories we should be able to judge which of them correct. Sadly since we…
The Lord says through Isaiah (chapter 19): “So I will incite Egyptians against Egyptians; and they will each fight against his brother and each against his neighbor, city against city and kingdom against kingdom.” Jesus says of Israel, “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and…
Thoreau wrote, “Our inventions . . . are but improved means to an unimproved end. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate . . . . We are eager to tunnel…
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