20 Oct 2017
Posted by Mark Jones 
I am reliably informed that Professor Clark is not interested in a public debate. That is fine. He is not obligated to debate me. I was hoping to use the occasion to bring clarity and unity to the Reformed churches on these important matters. Professor Clark's minister, Rev. Chris Gordon, wrote a post...
Read more → 20 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
In The Advancement of Learning 2.7.2, Sir Francis Bacon acknowledges that he's using old terms in new ways (e.g., "physic" and "metaphysic"). He claims that this is part of an effort to remain as close to tradition and antiquity as he can, even when he must depart from it in substance (at least in certain...
Read more → 18 Oct 2017
Posted by Mark Jones 
For many years now Professor R. Scott Clark has been tweeting and writing (on his blog) about matters that cause him grave concern. I have it on pretty good authority that I am one individual he has concerns about, and I think it is fairly obvious that he is referring to me when he denounces unnamed...
Read more → 18 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
A core principle of Reformational sacramentology was that the "presence" of the Lord was in the rites themselves as performed rather than (statically) in the elements themselves, and was to be accessed by faith. Or, to put it another way: that Christ was exhibited and offered objectively in the rites,...
Read more → 17 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
I've touched on the extra patristicum, er, extra calvinisticum before, here. The important idea in this connection is that the divine nature of Christ is omnipresent but his human body cannot be. This is a corollary of Chalcedonian Christology, viz. that the integrity of Christ's two natures must be maintained...
Read more → 12 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
We haven't had a Hemmingsen post in a while, and I know how it has made you pine. Fret not; I'm here for you. In their discussion of the virtues, the magisterial Reformers followed the classical tradition in considering religion to fall under the category of, or to be a part of, justice, which can be conveniently...
Read more → 11 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
In the last post we looked at Samuel Willard's discussion of the first of the "mutual duties" husbands and wives owe to each other in the context of his exposition of Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 64, which he calls "conjugal love." In today's post, he proceeds to the next of these shared duties,...
Read more → 10 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
As we've seen in the two previous posts, Francis Turretin argues that the works of believers are truly good, first, because they are done "by a special motion and impulse of the Holy Spirit," and thus he is their primary cause; and, second, because they are said to please God, indicating that they cannot...
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 → 03 Oct 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
The Protestant Reformers regularly referred to the sacraments as visible words--that is, they communicate the same gospel and promises as the written word, but in a different form, one that could be handled, touched, tasted. And yet the sacramental elements are not self-explanatory. For that reason,...
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