Grant Van Leuven's Posts

Grant Van Leuven's Posts

Confession and Pastoral Theology: An Extraordinary Means of Constant Conversion

Grant Van Leuven
Jun 10, 2016
Several people have told me they were first truly converted Christians upon becoming Calvinists. Finally, the Bible made sense when the Spirit enlightened them to see, caress, and smell TULIP’s five lovely petals of God’s sovereign embrace from regeneration to glorification. [1] Thus, as the...

Confession and Apologetics: Modeling Scripture’s Method to its Message

Grant Van Leuven
May 11, 2016
My seminary professor of missions emphasized what is often glossed over when discussing and doing mission work: the Bible not only presents a message but a method of its delivery. [1] Similarly, the Bible has its own method of apologetics (self-defense) to which we must defer: it presents itself as...

Confession and Orthodoxy: A Purifying, Preserving Distillation Process

Grant Van Leuven
Apr 22, 2016
Just as bottles of distilled water offer drink that is free of poisonous chemicals and clogging minerals, so the Church’s confessions provide boiled-down, condensed, purified orthodoxy for healthy Body life systems. For instance, a seminary student being examined on the floor of Presbytery with...

Old Princeton: Benjamin B. Warfield - a Reminder Not to Reinvent the Wheel

Grant Van Leuven
Mar 14, 2016
It is not uncommon for our church to receive protests for being careful adherents to the historic Westminster Standards; thus, I have developed a confessional apologetic that boils down to these modern proverbs: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”; and, “Don’t try and reinvent the wheel!” B. B...

Old Princeton: Charles Hodge—Don’t Throw Out the Roman Catholic’s Baptism with its Baptism Water

Grant Van Leuven
Mar 4, 2016
In the context of conforming more consistently to the Westminster Confession of Faith , our Session revisited re-baptism while studying sections 27:3 and 28:6-7, especially pondering these closing words: “The sacrament of baptism is but once to be administered unto any person.” This led us to...

Old Princeton: Archibald Alexander's Letters to the Aged

Grant Van Leuven
Feb 3, 2016
I have the privilege of ministering mainly to saints in their golden years. So as I preach through Leviticus 19, I am eager to reach verse 32 and lead my fellow greener brethren in reverencing our senior saints with these words: Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the...

Old Princeton: Revisiting Old Paths Leads to New Life

Grant Van Leuven
Jan 22, 2016
Just as it revives the Body of Christ when schooled in the classic theology and pious character of the good old Puritans, so we may be renewed by “going old school” with The Log College. Considering that the prominent eighteenth century evangelist George Whitfield referred to what would later be...

The New Testament's Use of the Old Testament: Worship Like a Child and With Your Children - Christ's Use of Psalm 8:2 in Matthew 21:16

Grant Van Leuven
Dec 25, 2015
In church, do you swagger with solemnity? Does a heavy countenance fall like a cloud over your pew? Are you so austere in worship that the children and babes in Christ near you know they best keep their mouths shut? In Matthew 21, the chief priests and scribes prove to be God’s enemies by not...

The New Testament's Use of the Old Testament: David Rejoiced in His Son's Resurrection:Peter's Typological Use of Psalm 16 in Acts 2

Grant Van Leuven
Dec 24, 2015
I once saw a sobering reminder of our mortality and need for the Son of David. A missionary shared his video of a dead Jamaican man lying in a simple wooden box in a walk-in freezer. Another man hammered nails into the box’s top as casually as one might prepare freight for shipping. The dead man...

Systematic Theology Safely Frames Christ in Preaching Scripture

Grant Van Leuven
Sep 17, 2015
The subject of a picture is determined by how it is cropped. So Systematic Theology guides the minister’s eye in preaching Christ through the Scriptures. And for a Presbyterian, the Westminster Standards are the thematic writings that aid his thinking through the presentation of the Bible to his...