Justification

John Davenant: The Formal Cause of Justification

Patrick Ramsey
Oct 24, 2017
O ne of the key theological battles between the Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church was over the doctrine of justification. This important battle continued on into the seventeenth century and indeed it continues unabated today. John Davenant, the Bishop of Salisbury and a British...

Faith Among the Graces: Edwards on Faith and Love

Jeff Waddington
Oct 10, 2017
This year we celebrate the 500 th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation when the German Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed a long series of academic debating points about the medieval Roman Catholic penitential system (the 95 theses) to the door of the Wittenberg church. One...

Justification & Sanctification (3)

Patrick Ramsey
Sep 27, 2017
I n this article, I will conclude looking at Obadiah Sedgwick’s discussion of the doctrine that God promises to sanctify and justify this people. Thus far we have seen the differences and similarities between these two salvific gifts ( article 1 ), and the reasons God in the covenant of grace...

Justification & Sanctification (2)

Patrick Ramsey
Sep 12, 2017
I n my previous article , I summarized two points Obadiah Sedgwick (c. 1600-1658) made concerning his stated doctrine that God promises to sanctify and justify his people. He addressed a third point (I had mistakenly said there were two more points in the last article) and then discussed three uses...

39 Articles—Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude (5)

Henry Jansma
Sep 1, 2017
A rticle 13 of the Thirty-Nine Articles is one of the three consecutive articles that set out human works in their relation to salvation in Christ. We saw last time how Article 12 deals with the significance of good works of believing Christians in light of the gospel. Article 13 continues now in...

The New Perspective on Paul: Justification is Moral Remedy

John Hartley
Aug 26, 2017
Eight years-ago this month a friend gave me a copy of N.T. Wright’s new book, Justification: God’s Plan...

The New Perspective on Paul: Salvation

Rachel Miller
Aug 23, 2017
One of the aspects of the New Perspective of Paul is a focus on the corporate, as opposed the individual, aspects of justification and salvation. In the Christian church today, there is a move by some to “correct” an overemphasis on the individual believer. The desire is to focus on the corporate...

Justification and Sanctification (1)

Patrick Ramsey
Aug 22, 2017
O badiah Sedgwick (c. 1600-1658) was a noted puritan preacher and a member of the Westminster Assembly from 1643 to 1649. Some of his works have been recently reprinted, including The Anatomy of Secret Sins and The Doubting Believer . His work on covenant theology entitled, The Bowels of Tender...

Paul, the Law, and the New Perspective

Tim Bertolet
Aug 21, 2017
Since the 1980s, a movement called the New Perspective on Paul has been a rising star in Biblical studies and Pauline scholarship. The movement primarily started through the writings of E.P. Sanders’ 1977 Paul and Palestinian Judaism as he explored the Second Temple Jewish texts and reexamined what...

Justifying a Non-Repeatable Justification

Nick Batzig
Jun 3, 2017
As there has been no small debate in recent decades over the doctrine of justification, I was delighted to come across a treatment of the once-for-all nature of justification in Geerhardus Vos' Reformed Dogmatics . Having introduced the subject by explaining that the Roman Catholic church conflates...