Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One striking aspect of the recent “Federal Vision” conflict in the various conservative micro-Reformed groups is a debate over what older theologians really meant and said. Examining the credentials of various people who speak with great assurance on these matters one sees repeatedly degrees in church/theology history studies. In fact,…
The Worship of the English Puritans by Horton Davies really valuable book for gaining historical perspective on the American Presbyterian scene. (I will note for the record that I don’t believe there is an objective definition for “puritan” and I wish historians would stop using it and instead speak of…
This is the conclusion to Frame’s discussion about historical/covenantal election in his The Doctrine of God (pp. 329-30): Historical election and eternal election are distinct, but they cannot be entirely separated. Note the following: 1. Both historical and eternal election are aspects of God’s saving purpose. The election of Israel…
From John Frame’s The Doctrine of God : So although the election of Israel is by grace, there is an important place for continued faithfulness. Individuals can belong to the chosen people, yet lose their elect status by faithlessness and disobedience. Branches can be broken off “because of unbelief” (Rom.…
I’ve recently re-discovered an awesome theological resource, The Westminster Shorter Catechism Project . It is excellent, not least because it demonstrates the healthy diversity that has always been allowable in the Reformed Tradition until recently. For example, consider the sources attached to Question and Answer #94: Q: What is baptism?…
A friend recently asked if the frequent saying of the Pledge of Allegiance was a sign of American jingoism, or an attempt to inculcate “nationalism” of a bad sort. It seemed to him as a Canadian that that might be the case. That seemed to me to be probably backwards,…
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INTRODUCTION Hope is a spring of human action. We do what we do because we hope to accomplish something by our actions, and when we are truly hopeless we do nothing at all. Scripture teaches us that we raise our children in hope, as well as in faith and love.…
Reviewing Malcolm Schofield’s Plato: Political Philosophy in the TLS, Jonathan Lear offers this superb precis of Plato’s politics: “For Plato, one cannot understand politics unless one grasps the nature and structure of human desire. Political scientists must be students of the human soul: for one cannot understand the problem of…
Reviewing Malcolm Schofield’s Plato: Political Philosophy in the TLS, Jonathan Lear offers this superb precis of Plato’s politics: “For Plato, one cannot understand politics unless one grasps the nature and structure of human desire. Political scientists must be students of the human soul: for one cannot understand the problem of…
Formalism seems a classical obsession, but Angela Leighton argues in her recent On Form that the key moment came with romanticism. Schiller said that in a beautiful poem “the content should do nothing, the form everything . . . . the real artistic secret of the master consists in his…
Walter Russell Mead’s recent God and Gold explores the uncanny success of Anglo-American power since the seventeenth century, what Mead calls “the biggest geopolitical story of modern times: the birth, rise, triumph, defence, and continuing grown of Anglo-American power despite continuing and always renewed opposition and conflict.” Since the late…
In the same article, Milbank argues that “dualism and hierarchy are . . . the secret heart of all immanentisms.” The argument is: In 18th and 19th century design arguments, God is “half-immanent” and interacts “on the same plane with what he influences.” This is a dualism between “the creative…
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