Now that Paul Levy, the Welsh presbyterian equivalent of renowned Catholic churchman, Father Jack Hackett has invaded Ref21, I wonder if it's not time that the Gnome added some Offa's Dyke software protection to keep the Welsh out. After all, two volumes on Calvinistic methodists hardly compensates...

My old friend and UCCF colleague from Themelios days, Dr. Mike Reeves, has an interview with John Piper on justification over at Theology Network. You can find it here .

To answer Phil's question, I am speaking on the Decalogue in the thought of John Owen. A tricky topic, as it can be approached in a number of ways and I have not yet settled in my own mind how to deal with it. The major religious/political/social flashpoints in Owen's era in terms of the Decalogue...

A friend just brought this quotation to my attention: "In the future, the great republic may only have blog schools, those being schools where students are taught to sit in their underwear in front of their luminescent laptops and pound out semiliterate diktats to an -- for the most part --...

While fast asleep in my office yesterday, I was rudely awakened by the advent of Steve Nichols and son (who then raided my chocolate bowl; he needs to know there's no such thing as a free lunch.....). Steve handed me a copy of his latest (when it comes to writing, is he man or machine???), the long...

In the wake of Rodney's intervention on the Sarah Palin doll story yesterday, an interested reader sent in the following link to another graven image site. Given the theology of Psalm 115, I believe we now have a theological answer to one of the world's great mysteries: why do librarians behave and...

Don't panic, the CRT is not yours truly, or even the anagrammatic and enigmatic A Cruel TR Man, but a new series of texts in classic Reformed theology, produced under the editorial oversight of Scott Clark at Westminster Seminary in California. Richard Muller says of the series: This is an...

Britain's Independent has an interesting article on a new book on Oliver Cromwell -- in my view the greatest Englishman who ever lived, and whose portrait, alongside that of Luther and the Protector's son-in-law, Henry Ireton, hang on the Great Wall of the Regicides in the Dean's office at...

I confess that, until I read September's Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland, I was blissfully unaware of the antics of Canadian evangelist, Todd Bentley. This is a delightful chap who's leading a `revival' ( sic and, in this case sick ) in Florida. Apparently, his ministry involves...

Westminster Seminary Bookstore are doing a great deal on Machen's Christianity and Liberalism at the moment. You can buy your copy here .

There's a fascinating article in The London Review of Books by Jonathan Raban on Neil Entwistle, the Englishman who murdered his American wife and child a year or two ago. The article is worth reading for a number of reasons. First, it is perhaps the best description and analysis of the strange...

For any moshers out there who might be interested: Ben Witherington, evangelical NT scholar, has been posting a series of `classic rock' lists on his blog, showing that he is not simply one of the most readable and lucid NT scholars for idiots like myself from outside the field; he's also a man of...

One of my students brought to my attention the fact that ChristianAudio.com are offering Augustine's Confessions as their free download of the month for August. You'll find the link here . As a former student once said in chapel, `Dr Trueman told us in Ancient Church that if you have never read...

I'm just finishing Garth M. Rosell's very readable book, The Surprising Work of God: Harold JohnOckenga and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism (Baker). It's essentially a biography of Ockenga,with particular focus on his role in the wider post-war American evangelicalrenaissance. Of special interest to...

My friend Eric Redmond has published an excellent blog on Obama and the election. I have no vote (much to the relief of many Ref21 readers, I am sure -- though, bizarrely, I still pay tax in a nation founded on a principle that, I believe, connected tax obligations to representation.......) but I...

Reading the excellent article on psalm singing below , I wanted to add just two more resources. The Free Church of Scotland has an excellent edition of the Psalter, combing both the 1650 and the new Sing Psalms which should be available from Free Church Bookshop . And Geneva College has a superb...

`The bell and the can and the bodies on the floor.' So goes a line from Mark Knopfler's `Ode to Sonny Liston.' Well, two heavyweight bruisers of more recent vintage are engaged in a slugfest over at First Things : N T Wright and R J Neuhaus. It's fun to see Wright taking the `Hayek's economics...

Robert Gagnon, who knows first-hand the loving tolerance and respect for dissident scholarship of certain circles, has chimed in very helpfully on the Heidelberg Catechism issue here .

but I do think the PCUSA dropping of the explicit reference to homosexuality in Heidelberg Catechism 87 does represent a better translation of the original German than the 1967 gloss/addition. Of course, we can have our suspicions about why the PCUSA is making this move now, but unbiblical motives...

`Any evening, any day, any time you're Lambeth way, you'll find 'em all doin' the Lambeth walk!' So goes the old song my granny taught me; but not any more, apparently. According to The Daily Torygraph, some bishops will be boycotting the Lambeth Conference this year. Read/watch it here . Just out...

Sorry to disappoint all my 'friends' out there. This is not my demise but that of one of the greatest church historians Britain ever produced, a man whose erudite writings opened up the world of the early church for many of us: Henry Chadwick. You can find an obituary, written by Rowan Williams,...

Del's asked about summer reading. Here's mine: Theology: Johannes Vanderkemp, The Heidelberg Catechism ; David F Wells , The Courage to be Protestant. Two books on my passions: Jeremy Schaap, Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics. After Emil Zatopek, Owens has to be one of...

You'll find an interesting response from Christopher Hitchens to Pat Buchanan's latest book (on how World War 2 was `unnecessary' here . I include it here because of the influence Buchanan has over many members of the Christian Right. For those of my grandfather's generation, Churchill's problem...

A friend brought a fascinating article on the internet to my attention. You can find it here . It's worth reading for a number of reasons, not least the image of a virtually blind Nietzsche banging away at an early typewriter and realising how the very technology he is using is changing his prose...