Biography

Happy birthday, John Calvin! It’s been 508 years since you were born in your beloved France. How should we celebrate? If you were here, would you join us? The Enjoyment of God’s Gifts He would probably disapprove extensive celebrations, and especially frown at mugs or T-shirts donning his face...

This week on Theology on the Go, our host, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. William VanDoodewaard. Dr. VanDoodewaard is Professor of Church History at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He has held appointments as Visiting Research Fellow in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s...

The Bondage of the Will is one of Martin Luther’s most important and enduring works. It represents his greatest defense of the doctrine of predestination and was written as a response to Erasmus of Rotterdam. I have previously described the relationship between these two men and the circumstances...

On June 28, 1586, the Slovenian Reformer Primož Trubar died in Derendingen, in the Holy Roman Empire. Almost unknown in the US, he is a national hero in Slovenia. His portrait has appeared on banknotes, coins, and postage stamps, and his life has been told and retold in books, articles, and even a...

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are signs of union (Rom 6:3-5) and communion (1Cor. 10:16) with Christ. As a result, they signify union (1Cor. 12:13) and communion among believers as members of Christ’s spiritual body (1Cor. 10:17). Yet these symbols of unity have often become points of deep division...

Luther’s recovery of a Bible-centered Christianity led him to revise the worship liturgy to reflect this new theological orientation. His reordering of worship services gives us a glimpse of his theology of music, and from his own words, we see that he had a high view of it, not only for worship,...

This week on Theology on the Go, our host, Dr. Jonathan Master continues his conversation with Dr. Robert Kolb. Dr. Kolb was born and raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and attended Concordia College, St. Paul, Minn. (1959-1961); Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Ind. (1961-1963); and Concordia...

The name evangelical was early on attributed to the Reformers and to Luther himself, and it was of course a fitting title as it not only grasped their recovery of the gospel, but also their emphasis upon it and the good news it declared. For Luther that good news only made sense in light of the bad...

The name “Martin Luther” tends to conjure up solitary images. Whether he was pinning his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, making speeches before an Imperial court at Worms, or hiding out in Wartburg Castle translating the Bible, we often picture Luther alone. But then there are the...

There is an episode from Luther’s life in which he played a prominent role. It is not a story with a happy ending, but we should be familiar with the Marburg Colloquy because it holds important lessons for the Reformed community today. In the middle of the 1520s, key Protestants desired a political...