One of the first things that gripped me about Reformation theology was its straightforward understanding of Christian discipleship. Cutting away distractions, early Protestant churches were marvelously focused and humble in their approach to Christian evangelism and ministry because that's what they discovered in the pages of Scripture, laid out in the Gospels and ultimately issued […]
When Christ poured out his Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, he ushered his “kingdom community” into the age to come. Pentecost is sometimes described as the birthday of the church, but that is not quite accurate. Far earlier in the Bible the Greek term ekklesia, which our English versions render “church,” had been applied […]
What Dr. Sinclair Ferguson recently said at Westminster Seminary California about the ministry of Word and Sacrament is applicable to the missional witness of every Christian church: it is tough but also terrific. It is tough because our missionary mandate is understood through the lens of the theology of the cross. Not many among our […]
I have a disease. I was born with it. I will die with it. In fact, I will die of it. An autopsy that could see everything about me would prove it to be the underlying cause of my death. While not all realize this and fewer acknowledge it, I have this malady in common […]
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of […]
Three decades of data have revealed near systemic evangelical ignorance of the Scriptures, ignorance of theology, church history, Christian art, architecture, and iconography and, correspondingly, ignorance of Christian deportment, both social and practical. (1) Ignorance abounds with the information superhighway literally at our fingertips and Kindles glutted with books. This ignorance, however, has little to […]
What do questions of media have to do with Word and Sacrament? We can find the latter discussed in the Bible, while the former is a late twentieth-century construct, isn't it? When I first started to think about this, that was how it appeared. But these two kinds of questions are more closely related than […]
In a speech delivered in October 2009 to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, cultural critic William Deresiewicz made the point that leadership requires solitude. (1) The leadership theme made sense’the men and women gathered in that room were preparing to command platoons or perhaps companies of troops. What […]
A four-year-old boy was boisterously arguing with a girl roughly the same age in the corridor of Yullin Church, where I serve as senior minister. In the middle of the fight, the boy quipped, "Do you know why we are fighting?" She answered him back, "You were cruel to me first." "No," the boy replied. […]
One of the more common questions I have heard over the years from my Baptist friends is, "How can an infant benefit from baptism?" The common assumption is that an infant has no capacity for faith, and therefore the child has no concept of what is occurring in his or her baptism; hence, baptism cannot […]
Two books have been published within the past couple of years that purport to tell us what all Christians should believe or know: Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne A. Grudem and edited by Elliot Grudem; and Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Bre-shears. These two titles […]
Throughout the history of the church, young believers and new converts to the faith went through a process called "catechism." Although this is an ancient practice, it has fallen out of use in contemporary Christianity. In seeking a remedy to this, White Horse Inn talked with J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett, authors of an […]
For the theologians of Old Princeton these are good days in which to be dead. Recently published is Paul Gutjhar's biography of Charles Hodge (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Paul K. Helseth's "Right Reason" and the Princeton Mind (P&R, 2010) has been well received. A biography of B. B. Warfield by Bradley Grundlach is forthcoming, […]
In general, American evan- gelicals have lost a true sense of the holiness, transcendence, and majesty of God. This is due in large part to a philosophy of public worship that appears to be focused more upon the presence of felt needs than upon the presence of God’and his divinely appointed means of grace. In […]
In this book’which had its beginnings as an article in the Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"’Nicholas Carr asks how the Internet is affecting the way we think. Our use of the Internet and digital media certainly warrants serious attention. According to a statistic cited by Carr, most Americans spend at least eight and a […]
