Use of the “five solas” — sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, solo Christo, and soli Deo gloria — to collectively summarize Reformation theology is apparently a twentieth-century thing. The reformers, to be sure, used these phrases (or very similar ones) to…
In a recent post Collin Garbarino took on the hordes of Halloween detractors to provide us with a piece of the real history of Halloween. I would like to ride his coattails (and let him take the majority of the angry emails)…
At the church where I minister, we have a morning and an evening service, both of which are practically identical in their order and form. As far as I am aware, we are one of the few Presbyterian churches in…
Death and darkness dominate America’s Halloween celebrations. Children dress as ghosts and ghouls, and October is the season for horror films. Many Americans, both Christian and non-Christian, think that this fascination with the macabre must be anti-Christian, but actually Halloween…
Death and darkness dominate America’s Halloween celebrations. Children dress as ghosts and ghouls, and October is the season for horror films. Many Americans, both Christian and non-Christian, think that this fascination with the macabre must be anti-Christian, but actually Halloween…
If we’re awake, we will have a keen sense of the powerful undertow of a culture that has discarded almost every reference to, or value of, Jesus Christ. To the world, the church is too often considered an obsolete community…
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,…
I’ve been slowly working my way through Katherine Sonderegger’s Systematic Theology Volume 1: The Doctrine of God. Released this year, it is the sort of book that pastor-theologians or theological students could make the focus of a reading group. It…
This is the sixth post in a twelve-part series on the current Christological confusion taking root in China’s emerging Reformed community (see part 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). Second Statement: Platonic Dualism As noted at the end of the previous post (see part…
My first article began with the observation that Satan ambitiously aims to attack the church at the very points that are intended by God for its defence. He seeks to bring the world into the church through its elders, and…
