May 23rd, 2012
Statistics can be misleading if they are abstracted from the moment they are calculated. But in that moment, they reveal a glimpse of reality. The well-known church growth leader, George Barna, provides us an opportunity to glimpse at the sad reality of the modern evangelical church as well as our culture. Back in 2000 one survey revealed that 75% of Americans agreed with the statement “God helps those who help themselves.” Then in 2005 another survey revealed that 11% of “born-again” Christians said they did not believe the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.
May 16th, 2012
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We exist to glorify and enjoy God. But that begs the question of whether there are reasons for belief in a god in the first place. There are three offered in Q&A 2: the light of conscience, the light of creation, and the light of the canon.
May 9th, 2012
“What is the chief and highest end of man?” This is our ultimate question and should be the heartbeat of who we are, thinking of it daily. This is what it is all about as a Christian. To have a “chief end” means that we were made for something, that we have a main purpose in life. And we have a “highest end,” among the many goals and accomplishments of our lives.
April 11th, 2012
Foreign missions is undoubtedly one of the primary tasks of the church. After all, it was Christ who commanded his church to evangelize the nations in the Great Commission. Moreover, we know that the apostle Paul was one who had a great zeal for missions.
March 13th, 2012
Closely related to the doctrines of justification and sanctification is the subject of good works. One of the most common objections raised by critics of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone is this: “If we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, what place does that leave for good works?” Even apostle Paul had heard a similar objection from Christians in Rome.
February 7th, 2012
All of us on the faculty of Westminster Seminary California are shocked and saddened by John Frame’s book, The Escondido Theology. Several of us were colleagues with John and several had been his students. We have appreciated particularly over the years his teaching of the apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, his critique of open theism, and his strong defense of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. (The statement of Andrew Sandlin on p. xxxi of this book claiming that John had been a polemicist against inerrancy is surely a mistake.)
August 1st, 2011
In part one of this series we considered Calvin’s interpretation of several biblical passages on consolation. In part two we looked at how he harvested a theology of consolation from his exegetical work. In part three we examined what he wrote in his Institutes on consolation, and in part four consolation in pastoral ministry. In this section we will analyze how Calvin preached the biblical doctrine of consolation to his congregation.
July 25th, 2011
For Calvin, Christian consolation is not only a theological reality but it is also the result of good pastoral practice. Christians often fail to appropriate the consolation they might have because they don’t humble themselves to confess their sins to one another.
July 18th, 2011
In the previous installment we looked at the way Calvin read Paul’s epistles and how he drew from them a doctrine of consolation, of God’s presence with his people in Christ, by the Spirit, in the gospel, in the sacraments, and in prayer. In this (third) part of this series we consider Calvin as a theologian of consolation.
July 11th, 2011
In the first part we saw that Calvin was a pilgrim who himself needed the consolation of the gospel, given by the Spirit, through the ministry of Word, sacrament, and prayer. He was also a careful, thoughtful, and sophisticated reader of texts and principally Scripture.
July 4th, 2011
Wikipedia, that ubiquitous source of unimpeachable scholarship, defines “consolation” as “something of value, when one fails to get something of higher value….” That is precisely the opposite of what John Calvin (1509–64) meant by “consolation.”For Calvin, the consolation that Christ gives to his people, by the gospel, through the Spirit, is not second prize but to be valued above that which we lost. When we consider Calvin, “consolation” might not be the thing we first associate with him.
