Rules, rules, rules The Westminster Assembly had taken upon itself the wonderful but formidable task of examining preachers for ministry in the church. By mid-autumn of 1643 the assembly recognized that it needed to further clarify and solidify its procedures…
[Editorial Notes: Out of our respect for Dr. Wayne Grudem and a desire to continue the ongoing debate regarding Trinitarian distinctions, we are pleased to have Dr. Grudem respond to some recent criticisms that have been leveled at him. As…
It has seldom received as public an airing as is now possible in the context of social media, yet controversy surrounding the eternal subordination of the Son position (ESS) is not new. Although it has not usually intruded upon the…
A recent blog post by Sammy Rhodes, a minister in the PCA and RUF chaplain, has caused something of a storm. Pitched as an apology by a theological conservative to the LGBTQ community in the wake of the Orlando massacre,…
Isaiah’s first Servant Song (Is.42:1-4) pictures a Servant who is gentle, patient, unthreatening and tender hearted. It is a magnificent portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect Servant of the Lord. It is remarkable that in his recorded public…
The most recent eruption of the eternal subordination of the Son controversy began with a couple of provocative posts by Liam Goligher, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, over on Aimee Byrd’s Housewife Theologian blog. Goligher’s posts…
About a year ago I took a solo road trip from Jackson, MS to St. Joseph’s Abbey in Covington, LA, which is the final resting place of the Roman Catholic novelist, Walker Percy. It was an opportunity to pay my…
[Editor’s Note: The editorial team, being aware of Dr. Glenn Butner’s 2015 article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (“Eternal Functional Subordination and the Problem of the Divine Will”) asked him if he would be willing to distill the…
Ref21 readers who are familiar with the British theologian John Webster will, I’m sure, already know that he passed away late last month. I’m equally sure that many readers of this site will not have heard of Webster, or will…
There is a profoundly important section titled, “On the Preaching of the Word,” in The Directory for the Public Worship of God, in which we find a very short and very wise statement about the minister’s responsibility to refute false teaching…
