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Writing

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

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Technology

Simulation as Inoculation

Every advent of new media creates the justifiable reaction from some that the necessarily accompanied amputation may not be worth the extension made possible by the new tools. This is not unique to the Digital Age. Lamoignon Malesherbes, the French politician who was counsel for the defense of Louis XVI,…

by Garrett SoucyApril 2, 2024
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Eschatology

Reject Optimism

A response to Gage Crowder's " The Hole in our Hope ?" Already, the first pages of the Bible promise a bright future. The story starts with the creation of heaven and earth, where heaven is perfect, but the earth is in a state of formless emptiness. Yet, God takes…

by Bogumil JarmulakMarch 27, 2024
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Eschatology

The Hole in our Hope? A Rejoinder

A rejoinder to Bubu Jarmulak's essay, " Embrace Pessimism ." Whereas calumnious critiques are reflections of more on the critic than the work criticized, good critiques are always opportunities for reassessment and improvement if they are received as such . Since its renaissance, the biblical doctrine of postmillennialism—or “optimistic eschatology,”…

by Gage CrowderMarch 26, 2024
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Biblical Studies

Jesus Did Not Pray to Avoid the Cross at Gethsemane

Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage,…

by James R. RogersMarch 19, 2024
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Church Music

Holy Toledo: A Critique of Eclecticism

On May 21, 1604, the cathedral of Toledo in Spain held job interviews for the post of choirmaster, the head of music at the church. The position had been vacated when the previous occupant, Alonso Lobo, was poached by the nearby cathedral of Seville, and Toledo needed a replacement who…

by John AhernMarch 5, 2024
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Covenant

The Docetic Covenant and Phantom Church Membership

Imagine — counterfactually: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus held up an empty hand and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant poured out for you. Drink of it.’ But there was no cup, no wine, nothing. If there’s no sign of the covenant, is there…

by John CarpenterFebruary 27, 2024

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Sermon notes

INTRODUCTION Once again Matthew records a series of three miracles, then a scene of a call to discipleship, and finally a description of the nature of Jesus’ ministry. The Jews begin to criticize Jesus, while the disciples wonder whom they are following. THE TEXT “Now when He got into a…

January 28, 2008

Eucharistic exhortation

Matthew 8:15: And Jesus touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she arose and waited on Him. Our sermon text contains a clear Eucharistic prophecy. When Jesus sees the faith of the centurion, He marvels, and He observes that this is a sign of a trend. Gentiles like…

January 27, 2008

Exhortation

Our sermon text this morning begins a section of Matthew in which Jesus performs a series of miracles. He cleanses a leper, makes paralytics mobile, calms storms, gives sight to the blind and speech to the dumb. He casts out demons and raises the dead. Everywhere Jesus goes, life comes…

January 27, 2008

Scope of the atonement

Jonathan Moore’s book focuses on John Preston, but he also deals with other English theologians who taught some form of universal atonement theology, including Ussher and John Davenant, the latter one of the English delegates to Dort. Preston combined particularist and universalist by distinguishing sharply between the scope of Christ’s…

January 26, 2008

Centrality of Resurrection

From Moore’s book again, Perkins writing: “the raising up of Christ is . . . his actuall absolution from their sins, for whom he died; for even as the Father by delivering Christ to death, did in very deede condemne their sinnes imputed unto Christ, for whome he died; so…

January 26, 2008

Perkins’s universalism

William Perkins has been accused of being “addicted to adding the qualifying phrase ‘for the elect’ to universalist Biblical statements.” In his recent book on John Preston and English Hypothetical Universalism (Eerdmans), Jonathan Moore argues that this assessment is exaggerated. Moore lays out Perkins’s views on definite atonement thoroughly, yet…

January 26, 2008

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