Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Book Review The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation & Evangelism by Norman Shepherd The Call of Grace is an excellent manual to put in the hands of laymen to teach them how to rest in God’s grace while taking seriously the prize of the upward call of…
My Role as a Parent in My Children’s Salvation Evangeline Jael Horne is our third child. My two boys were born while we were at seminary and we had the privilege of giving them to Jeff Meyers, our pastor at that time, for baptism. When Evangeline was born, however, I…
John Calvin writes in the Institutes about the possibility of admitting children to the Lord’s Supper by virtue of their baptism once and only once: At length they object, that there is not greater reason for admitting infants to baptism than to the Lord’s Supper, to which, however, they are…
The debate over paedocommunion does not seem to have made much headway on either side in recent years. Certainly both sides have made a solid effort to argue for their position. But no resolution seems to be forthcoming in the near future. As a convinced paedocommunionist, I find the church’s…
Lots of conservative Protestants want to answer “no” to this question. The problem with this position is that conservative Protestants are bound to believe what the Bible teaches. And the Bible says inconvenient things, like “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3.21), or “all of you who were baptized into…
This paper is something of a follow-up to my earlier study, “ Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future .” One of the more controversial aspects of that paper was my claim that Calvin held to a very high view of baptismal efficacy. Indeed, he was a…
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Wells quotes from British sociologist Anthony Giddens , who argues that postmodernism is not so much a rejection of modern foundationalism as “unmasking what has been hidden in the modern.” In classic Enlightenment foundationalism, reason is self-grounded, and faith in reason is a dogmatic faith. For consistency’s sake, Enlightenment thinkers…
Like many of David Wells ‘s books, I’ve find his recent Above All Earthly Pow’rs simultaneously bracing, stimulating, and frustrating. Wells examines the consequences of the confluence of two main cultural trends - the postmodern ethos and the increasingly pluralistic religious situation of the West. He makes many good points:…
Moses is mentioned 10 times in Kings, and there are some tantalizing connections with the 10 Words that Moses delivered to Israel. For instance: 1. 1 Kings 2:3: David exhorts Solomon to guard the Lord’s commandments and walk in his ways, using a 7fold description of the law. This is…
In his 1607 treatise, Idea of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects , the painter Federigo Zuccaro claimed that human being was creative being: “Because of His goodness and to show in a small replica the excellence of his divine art, [God] having created man in His image and likeness with respect…
William Bouwsma points out in his book on the “waning of the Renaissance” that the Renaissance challenged what he calls the “traditional conception of the self,” in which reason sits at the top of a hierarchy of discrete faculties, including will, passions, and body. The challenge to this conception during…
John Frame has a typically gracious though critical review of Brian McLaren ‘s Generous Orthodoxy in the current issue of Reformation and Revival Journal. Frame appreciates a number of the concerns that animate McLaren (learning from other Christian traditions, the missional concept of the church, a hermeneutic of love, among…
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