Church History

The book that started the “Marrow Controversy” was Edward Fisher’s The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher. It was first published in 1645 and 1649. In 1726, a new addition of the Marrow was published with the accompanying notes from Thomas Boston. This is the version that is republished...

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...

In 1 Peter 2:9, the Bible teaches that the church is a “royal priesthood”. The background from this passage is a quote from Exodus 19:6 where God gave the nation of Israel the same call: Exodus 19:6 “and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall...

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...