November 9th, 2017
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These various gatherings of God’s covenant community, the visible church, look quite different throughout history.
September 28th, 2017
Perhaps the first post-Apostolic use of the New Testament verb “to justify” (δικαιyω) occurs in 1 Clement, written just after 100 AD to the same Corinthian congregation to whom Paul had written half a century earlier.
October 27th, 2016
WSC’s latest faculty publication comes from Dr. Fesko. He’s written an essay entitled, “Reformed Orthodoxy on Imputation: Active and Passive Justification.”
September 28th, 2016
Associate Professor of Biblical Languages, Charles Telfer, has a new book that has just been released, Wrestling with Isaiah: The Exegetical Methodology of Campegius Vitringa (1659-1722).
March 27th, 2014
Dr. Godfrey, President of WSC, has just had a book review of Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (Oxford: OUP, 2012) by Keith Stanglin and Thomas McCall.
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.
May 2nd, 2012
I am thankful for the invitation to contribute to the Valiant for Truth blog. In the series that follows, I will be offering Meditations on the Larger Catechism, which will include exposition and application of this wonderful statement of Christian teaching from our Reformed Protestant tradition.
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.
June 13th, 2011
Of course, at Westminster California you can get a good taste for 16th and 17th century theology while getting your M.Div. Not because the faculty are romantic golden-age types lost in the past, but because the faculty across the board is so thoroughly conversant with their Reformed confessions and the thought of the period that spawned them.
June 6th, 2011
Just last night, a new member of our church — an adult convert and an avid reader — asked me if I preached according to the “redemptive historical” method. He had come across the term in reading Geerhardus Vos, and instantly realized that it was descriptive of what he had discovered (and enjoyed) about my preaching.
May 30th, 2011
The redemptive historical unity and unfolding of the Bible was one of the great revelations of my time of study at Westminster; I felt like the scales fell from my eyes in virtually every biblical lecture. And Cocceius and the story of covenant in the early Reformed tradition shows that this redemptive historical perspective is essential to the Reformation’s turn ad fontes, to the sources of our faith in Scripture. It is essential in a crucial sense to the Gospel. I’m convinced that this insight sets Westminster California apart from every other seminary out there, and it is a reflection of its fidelity to the Word of God and the Scriptures.
