John Hartley's Posts

John Hartley's Posts

“You probably won’t have much to say until you are forty.” The words passed easily enough over the breakfast table into my ears. Then they went deeper. Their sanctifying force was acute and penetrating. They have haunted me, in the best possible way, for twenty years now. Just before I heard those...
Natural theology, to be contrasted with Revealed Theology, is that human response to divine revelation where truths about God, or arguments for his existence, are discerned from the created order without aid of special revelation. In a sense, natural theology does not take special revelation into...
A valuable lesson for 21 st century Christians is found in the writings of three 2 nd century Romans: Pliny the Younger, an imperial governor; Tacitus, both senator and historian; and Suetonius, a prolific biographer of Caesars, poets, orators, historians, grammarians and rhetoricians. Observed in...
Let me begin with a little thought experiment. Admittedly, some readers will regard it as nothing more than a dark look into a dystopian future. A world worse than the Hunger Games ! Others will regard it as utterly utopian. An immanentizing of the eschaton. What would happen if all the churches of...
That holiness of life which the Christian has from God and before God and for God is not sourced nor drawn from even the best doctrinal formulations – as essential as they are to our faith. Nor is holiness of life sourced or drawn from moral transformation – as essential as it is to living out our...
The third person of the Holy Trinity is no less zealous in applying redemption to us than was the second person in accomplishing it for us. Like our Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit is perfectly ambitious toward the children of God. Once the Spirit applies the redemption of Christ – effectually calling...
Delighting in the Trinity, IVP Academic, 2012. Paperback, 135 pages Reviewed by John Hartley At the risk of sounding cheeky, Michael Reeves’ book, Delighting in the Trinity (IVPress, 2012) is delightful. It is the kind of book that should be reviewed annually, as if it had just been published. It...
The 17 th century minister and Scotsman, Alexander Nisbet said, “the most dangerous heretics have many followers; every error they introduce turns out to be a friend to some lust in the heart of man.” Case in point: Several years ago, a friend of mine discovered his pastor had committed adultery...
It is possible to make disciples that are just too new. Case in point. In his book, The Creedal Imperative (Crossway, 2012), Carl Trueman relays the story of a pastor who regularly declared his devotion to Scripture by dismissing creeds and confessions. With the Bible held high before his church,...
In his first sermon on our Lord’s prayer in John 17, Anthony Burgess (d. 1664), preacher and delegate to the Westminster Assembly, makes the case why prayer is necessary to all preaching. “If therefore we would have our preaching and your hearing do any good, be powerful to a heavenly alteration...