Introduction Hebrews 12.28 prescribes that Christian worship be grateful, awe-filled, and reverent. Hebrews 12.29 describes why Christian worship should be so: "our God is a consuming fire." In the preceding post, we paused to consider the significance of this imagery and concluded that it presents...

In his book, The God We Worship , Nicholas Wolterstorff defines worship as the "Godward acknowledgement of God's unsurpassable greatness . . . whose attitudinal stance toward God is awed, reverential, and grateful adoration." According to Wolterstorff, worship is "Godward" in its orientation. In...

"And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work" (2 Cor 9.8) . The doctrine of divine sufficiency is a glorious doctrine, whose rays extend far into the domain of Christian usefulness and consolation. In...

The present post is the second in a three part series addressing contemporary objections to the doctrine of the covenant of redemption (for part one, see here ). What follows is adapted from Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, ed., Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic (Baker...

In the Nicene Creed we confess that the church is "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic." Of these four marks, the third mark--the catholicity of the church--is probably the most susceptible to misunderstanding among evangelical Protestants. The catholicity of the church, according to common...

I begin every semester in my Church and Sacraments course with the following quotation from Martin Luther, which Karl Barth used "In Place of a Foreword" to introduce Church Dogmatics , volume 1.2. The quotation says so much about the relationship between Christology and ecclesiology in Protestant...

I. Virtue: a brief introduction In my previous post , I briefly noted the threefold grace that Paul unfolds in Titus 2.11-14: (1) "saving grace," which flows from God's free mercy toward sinners in the redeeming death of Jesus Christ, (2) "training grace," wherein the church becomes a school of...

Systematic theology must make sure that each doctrine it teaches is biblical. It must also make sure that each doctrine it teaches reflects an appropriate proportion and order in relationship to other doctrines. This proportion and order is determined by the shape of biblical teaching--"the pattern...

Most evangelical presentations of the doctrine of Scripture are implicitly trinitarian. They identify the Father as Scripture's primary author, the Son as Scripture's central subject matter, and the Spirit as the immediate agent of prophetic and apostolic inspiration. Scripture is God the Father...

Scholastic theology is often derided for the subtle distinctions it makes. Seemingly unable to provide a simple "yes" or "no" regarding disputed theological questions, the common scholastic reply, "we distinguish," sounds more like the response of a slick politician than that of a dutiful shepherd...

In previous entries in what is becoming an impromptu antiphonal blog series on the Trinity, Fred Sanders and I have focused on the nature and relevance of the doctrine of inseparable operations (see here , here , and here ). To this point, we have considered ways in which the unity of God's being...

I have been generally impressed by the way the brethren have conducted themselves over the past several days at Ref21 in debating vital issues regarding the presence of grace and merit in the covenant of works. I do not offer this post, therefore, as a direct (or indirect) corrective to any of our...

According to Carl Braaten, the gospel's claim that God raised Jesus from the dead requires us to address two questions: the question of whether it happened and the question of what happened. The former question--what we might call, "the apologetic question," is vital for if God did not raise Jesus...

Last week Paul Levy drew our attention to this video where Phillip Jensen worries that Calvinists "preach the system" rather than "preaching the Bible." Mike Ovey has responded, quite well I think, to Jensen's worry here . (HT: Jonty Rhodes.)

In 1528 Catholic and Protestant theologians met in the city of Berne to debate a series of topics associated with the burgeoning Reform movement in Switzerland. "The Ten Theses of Berne" focused on issues such as the nature of the Lord's Supper, prayers to the saints, purgatory, the veneration of...

Wesley Hill's two recent articles at First Things on divine impassibility (see here and here ) have caused a bit of a stir among the theologically minded denizens of social media. The traditional doctrine of divine impassibility states that God does not have "passions" and therefore that God is not...

As we come to the end of the year and stand ready to mark the beginning of another, it is good to remember that we mark time because time is intrinsically measurable, intrinsically finite. Not only is time itself finite, having a definite beginning in and with the creation of all things. Our times...

Christmas (along with Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost) is one of five "evangelical feast days" that celebrate key moments in the Son of God's saving mission. On these days, the church turns its attention in a special way to the redemptive historical events that mark "the fullness of...

The Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society is just under a couple of weeks away. This year's festivities will be held on November 19-21 at the Town and Country Resort & Convention Center in San Diego, California. The theme for the conference is "Ecclesiology," and the ETS website...

Last evening's post was flagged by the Turkish police . Apparently, it was deemed unsafe for the little ears. I'm not quite sure why. But I do have a guess. Perhaps the worry was that I was repeating the antinomian error that many (myself included) have observed in recent days. A charitable reading...

Being an unapologetic Carl Trueman fanboy, the recent announcement of his departure from the ranks of regular contributors to the Reformation21 blog has hit me quite hard. I'm told that my feelings are not shared by all. (Apparently the Alliance has received several congratulatory letters from...

About fifteen years ago at one of the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, Allan Fisher gave me, a poor doctoral student at the time, one of the best gifts that an aspiring student of theology could ever receive: a copy of Francis Turretin's three-volume Institutes of Elenctic...

I'm in the process of reading an excellent manuscript on Martin Luther, of which I hope to say more at a later time. Recently, I also finished reading an exceptionally fine study of the Westminster Standards by John Fesko. Both books have prompted me to reflect a bit on the benefits we receive from...

Over at First Things Peter Leithart recently posted some comments on Gijsbert van den Brink's article in the July issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology . Therein, van den Brink addresses recent lack of enthusiasm in academic theology for "social trinitarianism," i.e., the belief...