Preaching and the Mission of the Trinity
Every divine work reflects God’s Triunity. This means that if we want to understand what God is doing in our lives we must begin with who God is. The Father always acts through his Son and by his Spirit. We…
Category Reformation21
The Church’s Answer to Racism and Sexism
Racist attitudes, bigoted actions, rape, and assault have recently been dominating the news cycle. In the midst of chaos in our culture, the Church has the great answer to racism, sexism, and classism. We have the answer and we are…
Accommodating Rome?
Probably the most interesting Reformation celebration that I had the privilege of participating in last month took place in a Roman Catholic Church. The Center for Evangelical Catholicism here in Greenville, SC graciously invited me to join with two other…
Luther’s Royal Marriage
Martin Luther was an outsized personality, with great faith and some great flaws. Living with this great person has a good effect on you. Let me commend his little book, The Freedom of a Christian. When he challenged the practice…
The Printing Press and the Protestant Reformation
Johann Gutenberg and the Technology Johann Gutenberg is credited with having developed the movable type printing process sometime before 1450 while living in Strassbourg, but due to the limited information available about him the year is not certain. Gutenberg was…
The Printing Press and the Protestant Reformation
Johann Gutenberg and the Technology Johann Gutenberg is credited with having developed the movable type printing process sometime before 1450 while living in Strassbourg, but due to the limited information available about him the year is not certain. Gutenberg was…
Francis Turretin on Justification
Francis Turretin was the grandson of a Protestant Italian merchant who had emigrated to Beza’s Geneva. When Turretin died in Geneva in September 1687, nearly 170 years had passed since Martin Luther had sparked the Protestant Reformation by posting the…
James, Justification and the Human Court
I have often taken comfort in the fact that the Apostle Peter said that Apostle Paul wrote “some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15-16). I…
The Troublesome Doctrine of Biblical Authority
In the years 1518–1519, the Leipzig Debates were called and conducted between Johann Eck and Martin Luther, among others, in Pleissenburg Castle in Leipzig Germany. At the time, Luther would have presented the latest instance of the annoying humanists and…
Closer Than a Sister
Growing up, I always wanted a sister. It’s not that I didn’t love my brother. I did, and I do. I wouldn’t trade my brother for the world. I didn’t want a sister instead of a brother but in addition…