The myth of the secular Shakespeare continues to cast a long shadow over most people’s perception of Shakespeare’s plays. Until I inherited the Shakespeare course in my department halfway through my career, I assumed that despite certain Christian patterns and…
Ref21 readers might be interested to read (obviously well edited) reports of a speech made by a member of Duke Street Church ( in South West London), a high court judge on the family issue. He had taken part in a BBC…
Apparently, in my distress tear-laden state I applied an incorrect hyperlink to the sermon preached by Dr Bill Barcley at Rev Carl’s ordination.
What is evil?There are two kinds of evil: moral and natural. Moral evil is sin, such as murder, rape, abuse, terrorism, or genocide. Natural evil is what causes suffering and unpleasantness; it is the result of moral evil. For…
James D.G. Dunn once referred to the epistle of James as “the most Jewish, the most undistinctively Christian document in the New Testament.” [1] We all know that Martin Luther had serious concerns about the content of the epistle of…
I notice Delboy’s link to Trueman’s ordination simply loops back to the same page. Is this proof that blogging is, as we all suspect, mere narcissism? Or is it perchance that Derek wants to deny readers access to Bill Barcley’s…
Derek has commanded us all to offer up our summer reading list. I’m still sorting through which novels to include. In the meantime, I want to mention a new book from our friend Thabiti Anyabwile (who, like me, is one…
Many of the Ref21 bloggers are at Disneyworld where this year’s PCA General Assembly is meeting, Phil Ryken has been spied wearing Mickey Mouse ears. Sean Lucas was heard making a terrific Goofy impersonation and Ligon has not been seen;…
In my most recently published article on Ref21, Five Arguments Against Future Justification According to Works (see part 2 here), I expressed the position that the judgment of believers in Christ on the last day will consist only of reward and…
Summer Reading As I continue my reading on John Calvin, I picked up an excellent work by Machiel A. Van den Berg, entitled Friends of Calvin. It contains twenty-four relatively short chapters on people who feature in Calvin’s…
