The Calvinist International
Christians struggle with two kinds of assurance – assurance that God loves them and assurance that God likes them. We might immediately cringe at such language as overly anthropomorphic and sentimental. I want to forestall this reaction, however, by admitting that such language can and has been used in all sorts of distortedly sentimental ways. […]
My essay over at Mere Orthodoxy on the Spiritual Friendship conversation has generated a fair amount of discussion these past few weeks. Much of it has been very good. Some of it was of the predictable online partisanship variety, which, while inevitable, is still too bad. There was a sort of blind partisanship on the […]
Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician whose work became particularly regarded across Europe and America for use in pastoral counseling. He was an M.D. but also an orthodox Calvinist, and his writings reflect both medical and theological knowledge. Dr. Tournier was a member of the Oxford Group and published over twenty books. The selection printed […]
In his lengthy discussion of the Decalogue in Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin expresses a dual truth; that we are to love all mankind without exception, and that those who are tied more closely to us should benefit from our special loving attention. I do not deny that the more closely a man is linked […]
Paul paints a marvelous picture of Christ’s “kenosis” or humility in his Epistle to the Philippians, where we are told that Christ “emptied himself [ekenosin], taking on the form of a servant…” In Wesley’s words, he “emptied himself of all but love.” In his Epistle to the Thessalonians Paul reveals that he too has become like […]
Phillip Cary offers an informative summary of Augustine’s appropriation of the Platonic concept of love or eros (ἔρος) – the Symposium (a dialogue “περὶ τῶν ἐρωτικῶν λόγων”) is perhaps the most famous dialogue in this regard – and its relationship to his theology of grace and freedom of the will – for those who are interested in further examination […]
Dr. Bruce Waltke’s commentary on the book of Proverbs is a standard for evangelical OT scholarship. In the course of commenting on a few texts, he makes points relevant to my recent TCI series on pacifism. [10:]12 The quatrain now probes the sources of good and bad communication to the way people perceive others who […]