How do the early church creeds and the Reformed confessions fit into the life of the local church? As someone who came to Reformed convictions but had not been raised in a Reformed context, this was a question I had…
Paragraph one of the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith sets forth the necessity of Scripture, if Scripture is necessary then it is essential to know which ancient Judeo-Christian writings combine to make up its content. The Westminster Assembly’s confession answered…
In my previous two articles (here and here), I have maintained that the word “cessationism” needs to be used in the way it was given to us by the Westminster Divines. My critics have stated that the Divines weren’t perfect…
We live in an image-obsessed culture – everything we do is captured in images: photographs, drawings, videos, and TikToks. Images and images and images and images. They help us think. They help us learn. They help us better understand ideas…
A Directory of Worship for the PCA? The PCA’s “Directory for Public Worship” (DPW) has been in constitutional limbo since its adoption at the Third General Assembly in 1976. Book of Church Order 56-58 have full constitutional authority (sacraments…
Ever since the garden of Eden, sin has been cast as freeing and God’s law as enslaving. Today it’s endemic; sin is glamourized in sitcoms, on magazine covers, on YouTube, in Hollywood, by the influence of peers, and of course,…
Ray Ortlund, one of the original signers of the Nashville Statement, in his book Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel, wrote poignantly on the gospel implications of taking a public stand on sexual issues in a culture such as ours:…
In the denomination in which I serve as a minister–The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)–we have confessional standards to which all our ministers voluntarily agree to submit, subscribe, and support. The language we use to describe this action is that…
