The Sovereignty Of God
by Franciscus Junius translated by Ryan M. Hurd The following is a translation of Franciscus Junius’s De Providentia Dei, “God’s Providence,” a short disputation held while he was professor. Abstaining from further introduction about Junius himself, I will add a word regarding the translation below. I have made no effort to establish a critical text […]
Humble Calvinism By J. A. Medders The Good Book Company, 2019 128 pages (paperback), $12.99 If you’ve been part of Western Christianity for the past fifteen or twenty years, you’ve probably run into a brand of Calvinism—or I should say Calvin-ist—that can’t easily be described as “humble.” It’s this issue that Jeff Medders confronts in […]
Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought by Richard A. Muller Baker Academic, 2017 336 pages (hardcover), $45.00 For the past decade, there has been an ongoing debate tucked away in academic journals and monographs concerning how Reformed theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries understood human freedom […]
The Puritans are best known for their works of practical theology’works that express a profound grasp of biblical knowledge, channeled into tangible and helpful application for the believer. Foremost among the subjects of practical divinity is the relationship between human suffering and divine sovereignty. The American church is always in danger of abandoning a robust […]
Hyper-Calvinism, like so many "ism" words, is hard to define. It is sometimes said that a fundamentalist is that person on the Christian spectrum who is slightly to the right of you. Thus "hyper-Calvinist" is often used as a pejorative by those who are just a tad more Calvinistic than the one using the epithet. […]
Ever since Jesus delivered his parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee and Paul wrote his stinging Epistle to the Galatians, the doctrine of grace has filled hearts with praise and has provoked sharp controversy. What does it mean to be saved by grace? In the history of the church, two broad traditions emerged. […]
The debate is as old as Christianity itself: what is the relationship between the fallen state of humanity in sin and the work of divine grace, or between God's initiative and human willing in salvation? Identifying the historical theological structure of this complicated debate will bring clarity and precision to our own reflections on the […]
I recently had the sad experience of watching two dear members leave our congregation; and after two hour-long phone calls, I was able to get to the root of the issue: my recent sermons on the doctrine of election from Acts 9. Though I tried my best to dissuade them against leaving the fellowship, they […]
