16 Jul 2018
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
It is well known that C.S. Lewis borrowed the phrase "mere Christianity" from the seventeenth-century Puritan Richard Baxter; Lewis says as much in his book called--wait for it--Mere Christianity. Lewis also uses the phrase with some regularity in other writings, as indicated here. For instance, in his famous...
Read more → 11 May 2018
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Peter Hitchens has written a rather remarkable essay on the difference between the religious persecution carried out by Queen Elizabeth I and that done by Bloody Mary. What's more remarkable is that it was published by First Things. Mr. Hitchens' essay attempts a number of things, but its most important...
Read more → 07 May 2018
Posted by Joseph Minich 
Matthew 16:13-20 has been the subject of enormous controversy in the history of the Christian church. This is particularly the case with respect to the interpretation of its famous “rock” and “keys of the kingdom of heaven” clauses.[1] It is safe to say, in fact, that the church has never quite...
Read more → 12 Dec 2017
Posted by Mark Jones 
Consistency I want to follow up a comment I made on Facebook where I said, “If you don't call your baptized infants Christians then you should give up paedobaptism.” Naturally, for many Baptists, this proves why we shouldn’t baptize babies. But, some of them might say, at least you are being...
Read more → 05 Dec 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
One of the most important arguments that Richard Hooker makes in the preface to his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, now available in a modernized version from the Davenant Institute, is that church order (or polity) and discipline are adiaphora: neither Episcopacy nor Presbyterianism (roughly, the Genevan...
Read more → 31 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
In a truly bizarre thread on Twitter yesterday--the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation--started by our own Steven Wedgeworth, a number of traditionalist Roman Catholics speculated as to whether it would be a good thing for the church to take up the cause of burning heretics at the stake...
Read more → 25 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
In the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, Pius XII, relying on Pius IX, makes a rather startling claim about the duty of theologians in the church: It is also true that theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living...
Read more → 13 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
In a recent post at First Things, Archbishop Charles Chaput seems to want to appropriate Martin Luther's image of "Babylonian captivity" to describe the situation of "believing Catholics and Protestants alike" over against the bugbears of modernity: for instance, consumerism, sex, technology, and sex (this...
Read more → 03 Oct 2017
Posted by Mark Jones 
Paul Zahl and Tullian Tchividjian are busy writing love letters (See here and here) to one another on Tullian's personal website. Zahl's article makes the following contention: "I would go so far as to say that Tullian’s personal experience, as bad as you want to make it out, has qualified him (and...
Read more → 31 May 2017
Posted by Mark Jones 
So, what do you know of Puritan hymnody? Did the Puritans sing hymns? If so, what was the nature of the hymns they sang? Earlier Reformed theologians debated this question and the evidence shows that no firm consensus existed on exclusive Psalmody in corporate worship. For example, the influential...
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