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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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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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