Bible

Kassia – A Bold and Sensitive Byzantine Poet Around the year 830, in Constantinople, that Byzantine Empress Euphroshyne organized a bride-show to find a wife for her newly-crowned sixteen-year old son Theophilos. This was a common match-making system of her times. Kassia – possibly 20 at that time...

Fear Podcast Jonathan and James lead a timely conversation about fear. As we all grapple with a viral pandemic—and the social isolation, anxiety, and economic uncertainty it can bring--fear can creep in, bringing with it hopelessness and even despair. How must Christians respond when the world is...

Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Miller – An Inquisitive Woman Some time ago, I wrote an article about Hugh Miller, a Scottish geologist and author who was greatly esteemed by both scientists and common readers during the perplexing times of the Scottish religious Disruption and of Darwin’s new scientific...

The more we have explored the theme of grace as it unfolds in different ways throughout Scripture, the more we have discovered its variegated beauty and its far-reaching implications for our lives as Christians. It is more pervasive than we often imagine and, as we have noted in an earlier post,...

The apostle Paul spent quite a bit of time in prison. In Acts, Paul is imprisoned in Philippi (Acts 16), and then spends the last quarter of the book in various prisons—Jerusalem, Caesarea—ultimately ending the book under house arrest in Rome (Acts 21–28). The letters of Ephesians, Philippians,...

Johann Heermann and the Comfort of the Cross In the spring of 1630, while the Thirty-Year War raged around Europe, pastor and poet Johann Heermann wrote a hymn to inspire his congregation to meditate on Christ’s suffering. Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended, that we to judge thee have in hate...

Every year a late night talk show host encourages parents to prank their kids with a faux profession that they devoured all their little pumpkins’ Halloween candy. [1] The show features videos sent in of children throwing monstrous fits of rage and heartache until the parents reveal they are “just...

John Calvin called justification as “the main hinge on which religion turns” and said we must devote great attention to it ( Institutes, III.xi.1). When we consider justification’s role in the order of salvation it plays a crucial role in distinction from other element but not in separation from...

Imputation of the Active Obedience of Christ Jonathan and James are joined by Alan Strange. Alan is professor of church history at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, and a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The question is posed: How important is the doctrine of the active obedience of...

To know how to act, we need to know what story we are in. Without suggesting that anyone wants to create a false narrative about the corona virus, the media can lead us to think we are in a short story when we are in a novel. In a sports-crazed nation, we hear that opening day for Major League...