Meet the Puritans

A doption has been occasionally undervalued and neglected in church history. Yet Paul treated adoption as the end to which the Father predestined his elect (Eph. 1:5). Adoption is the sum of our privileges, or our “inheritance,” in Christ. Our adoption is in Jesus Christ, the natural son, that we...

David Clarkson and Soul Idolatry, Part 1: The Problem Identified Recently, I was preaching from 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, where we learn of the church turning “to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven” (ESV). I took the opportunity to study the theme of...

T his is Satan's most common scheme: He presents the bait and hides the hook. Satan presents sin as fun, satisfying, profitable, and pleasurable, while concealing the miseries and pain that always accompany sin. Surely this is part of what Scripture calls the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). We...

How can we be salt and light in our world, so that instead of being “trodden under foot” or “hidden under a bushel” (vv. 13, 15), we can resist evil and do good, and moving unbelievers to glorify God as our Father in heaven? To answer that question, let’s listen to the wisdom of the English...

Last April I had the chance to hear D.A. Carson speak at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. Speaking on the subject of redemption, Carson made reference to a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) titled “Cowper’s Grave.” The poem opens, It is a place where poets crowned may...

Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, God’s Ambassadors: The Westminster Assembly and the Reformation of the English Pulpit, 1643-1653 , Studies on the Westminster Assembly (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017). 215pp. Hardcover. $40. T here is a growing interest in the history—and especially the...

His Sacramental Theology - The Lord's Supper In our last post, we started on Tyndale’s theology of the sacraments first generally and then specifically with baptism. We will now finish up on Tyndale with his convictions on the Lord’s Supper. The majority of Tyndale’s sacramental writing centered on...

Temptation is an issue that Christians rarely talk about these days. Even the word itself has quietly slipped out of religious use, becoming instead a term used to boost sales of perfume and chocolates. Attempting to create an electrifying name that would attract big audiences, television producers...

How can we be salt and light in our world, so that instead of being “trodden under foot” or “hidden under a bushel” (vv. 13, 15), we can resist evil and do good, and moving unbelievers to glorify God as our Father in heaven? To answer that question, let’s listen to the wisdom of the English...

His Sacramental Theology - Baptism I n our last post, we looked at Tyndale’s covenant theology, which contributed to the development of a mature Englished Reformed theology in the following century. This time, we will treat Tyndale’s sacramental theology in general and then baptism specifically...