Book Review

A fashion designer goes about creating clothes for people with a keen sense of how the parts and the whole will best fit together. The designer does not just throw fabric, thread, and needles into the wind but carefully draws patterns and then every stitch brings the pieces together. So ... God is...

Paul T. Nimmo and David A. F. Fergusson, The Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 345pp. Paperback. W hat is Reformed Theology? This is a valid and important question. Answering it may be more difficult than appears at first. Unlike Lutheran...

Throughout Genesis chapters 1 and 2, the reader understands that it is God alone who gets to determine and pronounce what is good (each of His created days - 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31) as well as what is not good (that man should be alone - 2:18). It is for this reason that God put a reminder, a...

My father's family escaped the Soviet Union in 1934, a few months after the United States established diplomatic relations there, in 1933. They had Russian roots and naively returned to visit an ailing relative in 1922. The Russians said "Welcome back, comrades," seized their passports, and kept...

Matthew Levering, Was the Reformation a Mistake? Why Catholic Doctrine Is Not Unbiblical . Grand Rapids, MI, 2017. 231pp. Paperback. $16.99. W e allegedly live in an age of tolerance. Yet tolerance often takes on distorted meanings. Contrary to popular misconceptions, tolerance does not mean that...

How important are the first chapters of Genesis to our understanding of the whole of Scripture? What happens to our perspective if we isolate Genesis 1-3 from the rest of God’s Word? Richard Barcellos drops in. He’s written Getting the Garden Right: Adam’s Work and God’s Rest in Light of Christ...

Rik Van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 296pp. Paperback. $25.00. W hy review a book on medieval theology on a site devoted to Puritan and Reformed theology? At least two reasons are prominent. One good reason for doing so is that...

In my next two columns, I want to tell the stories of men who seek integrity at work, men who strive to live by principles, and bring constructive change as a result. I will begin with a Christian businessman whom I will call Adam Ross. Ross is the CEO of Brick Corps, a large, rapidly growing...

Among the early English Puritans, none has greater pastoral insight and enduring readability than Richard Sibbes. This blog hopes to honor his classic work, The Bruised Reed. First published in 1630, it opens with Matthew 12:18-21, which cites Isaiah 42. Behold, my servant whom I have chosen... a...

Today, Dr. Michael Allen is with us! He’s the professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. And he’s the author of Sanctification, part of the New Studies in Dogmatics series from Zondervan. His visit gives us the perfect sounding board to ask “Can our...