Luther, Beer and 1522
I have received unexpected and unsolicited gifts of two drinking vessels recently. The first, from the person we at the Spin know simply as Evil Amy the Less, the author who last year had the slanderous temerity to base (and…
Category Postcards from Palookaville
The Descent of Man
Reading Augustine's De Trinitate this semester with a group of students, I was struck by this brilliant analysis of the way that sin operates. It comes from Book XII: "For just as a snake does not walk with open…
Obituary for Iain D. Campbell
Donald Macleod has written a moving obituary of the Rev. Dr. Iain D. Campbell. You can find it here.
The Book of the Year
‘To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.’ So wrote John Henry Newman in his famous essay on doctrinal development. I have critiqued this comment from a confessional Reformed perspective in First Things and will do so…
Bruce Gordon at his Best
My favourite church history book of 2016 is Bruce Gordon’s John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. I confess to being a little partisan: Bruce is my oldest scholarly friend since we were both postgraduates in Scotland in the late…
Bruce Gordon at his Best
My favourite church history book of 2016 is Bruce Gordon’s John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. I confess to being a little partisan: Bruce is my oldest scholarly friend since we were both postgraduates in Scotland in the late…
evangelical Ecumenism
I’ve spent the last few months finishing up a book with Bob Kolb, the Luther scholar, entitled Between Wittenberg and Geneva: Lutheran and Reformed Theology in Conversation. It is due from Baker later next year. Bob is, for my money,…
Tone Deaf Ref
Todd’s inaugural post as the new editor of this blog (all complaints to Pruitt from now on, please) makes a very good point and also highlights Fred Sanders’s fine review of Richard Rohr’s book on the Trinity. Sanders is witty…
If you think a vote is a sin, then have the courage to treat it as such
It's been interesting seeing some of the sharp rhetoric being used about Christian voting over the last few weeks, rhetoric that has if anything become more extreme in the last twenty-four hours. But here's the thing: if you are…
The Countdown Begins
Reformation Day 1516 brings us to the final year countdown to the 500th anniversary of Luther's call for a debate about the nature and scope of indulgences, the event which is popularly seen as the start of the Reformation. …