History and Rebirth

Writing of the difference between the medieval Renaissance and the later Humanist one, Marie-Dominique Chenu states:
The fact is that a movement of returning to the Ancients can stem from two types of inquisitiveness, which, if not always separate, are quite different from one another. In the one case, the Ancients are cultivated for their [...]

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Creator/Redeemer

Ok, given divine simplicity (et. al.), God’s relations to others as creator or redeemer are both names of the same thing. Redemption is simply God’s righteousness and power manifesting themselves (itself?) in fallen creation, and these are the very same things that created in the first place (since they are Jesus). Salvation is, [...]

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Postmil

So creation was simply God being God, although in a new and mysteriously free way, wherein He made an other to bring into His love. This has all been said before but it will take some explaining for us:
If, however, any one say, “What then? Could not God have exhibited man as perfect from [...]

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God Can Be Challenging

It is often remarked that conservatives build their theology off Paul, whereas liberals build their’s off Jesus.
We, of course, rightly respond that the two are in harmony, but usually we still use this as a defense of using Paul to interpret Jesus. The more clear interprets the less clear and all.
But at some point, the [...]

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2 Kingdomz 4 Life

Andrew has been taking it pretty hard to the neo-two kingdoms socio-political theory. I can’t say that I would use the scatological language anymore (I’m trying to do better), but it is hard to say that folks who are personally opposed to abortion but cannot be so politically are anything other than fools in [...]

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Hungarian Reformed on the Sacraments

In the latest edition of Kerux, there is a fine presentation on the Hungarian Reformed Churches. James T. Dennison even translated their confessions.
Of those confessions one is the Erdod Confession. I thought that it had a good and condense statement on the sacraments that presented the basic Reformed position. This is [...]

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The Chariot of Israel

“My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen!”
Elisha shouted this out in 2 Kings 2: 12 when Elijah was being taken up in the fiery chariot.  The question that ought to come up in our minds, though it often doesn’t, is “How did he know what this was?”
Is there another reference to [...]

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Grace a Divine Attribute

Richard Muller explains the Reformed orthodox doctrine of the gratia Dei as being a divine perfection:
Although by far the larger discussion of divine grace belongs to the soteriology of Reformed orthodoxy, the theologians of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also consistently place the gratia Dei among the divine affections. Divine grace, as indicated [...]

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Augustine’s Sources

It was perhaps a year ago when a friend of mine remarked that he had, strangely, never considered Augustine as a thinker working within an established tradition. For whatever reasons, but most certainly due to Augustine’s immense status in our tradition- indeed he is perhaps the only patristic source that the average Reformed [...]

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Letham Against the Covenant of Redemption

In his The Holy Trinity, Robert Letham levels a brief criticism against the notion that Christ’s salvation was but a revelation of a covenant made between the Father and the Son and not their very shared nature. Writing against Warfield, Letham states:
By the same token, we point to the obedience of the incarnate Son [...]

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