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If I had my time again, I would probably have spent it studying patristic or medieval theologians. The reason? Reformed theology, at least as developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, drank deep at the wells of the early fathers and the greats of the Middle Ages; and, ironically, to understand Reformation theology one really […]
J. R. R. Tolkien's most recently released book, The Children of Hurin, takes us back to the world of elves, orcs, sword fights, and fire-breathing dragons during the First Age of Middle Earth. However, this is not the same type of adventure tale readers of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings might expect. Episodes […]
Last night one of the women in my church's new members' class asked an innocent, but perceptive, question: "If you're not Roman Catholic, are you automatically Protestant?" The answer, unfortunately, is that Protestantism-in its classical sense-can no longer be assumed. Even those who are not members of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy may look with […]
Once upon a time, the label evangelical identified those who were committed not only to historic Christianity but to the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. In our day, however, that can no longer be taken for granted. Increasingly, evangelical scholarship is challenged by trends in biblical studies […]
Sola Fide: Crucial Then, Crucial Now? As a faithful Roman Catholic, Martin Luther (1483-1546), the father of the Protestant Reformation, strove with all of his might to attain salvation while serving as a monk in the little town of Wittenberg. He prayed earnestly, studied tirelessly, held countless vigils, recited numerous masses, and harshly mistreated his […]
1. That faith whereby we are justified is most frequently in the New Testament expressed by receiving. This notion of faith has been before spoken unto, in our general inquiry into the use of it in our justification. It shall not, therefore, be here much again insisted on. Two things we may observe concerning it:-First, […]
Pastors are used to hearing complaints about the big words of our theological vocabulary: words such as atonement, propitiation, and eschatology. I defend these "big words" because they carry so much good news. But it is just as important to argue for the little words of theology. After all, it was Jesus who insisted, "Until […]
In civil courts and in human judgment, issues about rights or debts are certain, and mercy is uncertain. But the matter is different in God's judgment. Here mercy has a clear and certain promise and command from God. (Apology to the Augsburg Confession, III, 224). It would make a great episode of Perry Mason or […]
You may have heard the story of the Mennonite Brethren movement. One particular analysis goes like this: the first generation believed and proclaimed the gospel and thought that there were certain social entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel and advocated the entailments. The third generation denied the gospel and all that were left were […]
Out of an abundance of patristic texts on justification, I have selected a few typical examples from the East and a few from the West to show exemplary expressions of clear, explicit pre-Protestant, authentically Pauline justification teaching. Early Eastern Voices on Justification Key textual evidences from Origen, John Chrysostom, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus show that […]
In March 2007, Michael Horton interviewed Dr. Robert Sungenis, president of Catholic Apologetics International for the past fourteen years and author of several books on Roman Catholicism, including the best-selling Not By Faith Alone: A Biblical Study of the Catholic Doctrine of Justification (Queenship, 1997). Michael Horton: Robert, can you give us some background on […]
This posthumous work is everything you would expect from Ed Clowney, the first president of Westminster Theological Seminary. The book is pastoral, theological, and of course very concerned with redemptive history. The purpose of the book, expressed in the preface, fits clearly under the rubric of redemptive history: "What role does the law play in […]
