In places with a Christian heritage the weightiness of baptism can easily be underestimated. Many people get baptized, or baptize their children, out of impulse, or as a matter of custom. It isn’t usually a sobering decision. Believers under persecution…
Jonathan Gibson has gifted the church a wonderful book titled, I will build My Church: Selected Writings on Church Polity, Baptism, and the Sabbath, published by Westminster Seminary Press (2021). I say that Gibson has gifted the church, but he…
The Federal Vision speaks a lot about the objectivity of the covenant. What does that mean? Doug Wilson puts it somewhat crassly when he says, “It can be photographed and fingerprinted.”[1] For Wilson, the fingerprint is baptism.[2] Baptism, though an…
His Sacramental Theology – Baptism In our last post, we looked at Tyndale’s covenant theology, which contributed to the development of a mature Englished Reformed theology in the following century. This time, we will treat Tyndale’s sacramental theology in general…
Eating disorders can fall towards two extremes. Some abuse God’s good gifts by eating too much food or bad food; others starve themselves, perhaps attempting to lose weight or control their body in some other way. Similarly, baptism is often…
If I could preach only one sermon, I would preach my one allotted message to the visible church. I would preach with the weighty concern that the baptized are on an irreversible course toward eternity. And the baptized, those well-ordered…
Monica of Tagaste – A Persistent Mother Augustine was a difficult teenager, the kind that keeps parents up at night. The restlessness he would later describe in his Confessions was already evident at a young age, especially to his…
As we have seen in our study of the preceding articles in the Thirty-Nine Articles, article 25 on the sacraments maintains that they are not only badges and tokens of Christian men’s profession, but “…certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs…
The Thirty-nine Articles continue its narrative as it sets out a biblically faithful theology of God’s ordained means of grace in the sacraments. As we have seen in our study of other essential doctrines, the article begins with the general…
I have always taken comfort from the fact that if Peter could find some of Paul’s saying as hard (2 Peter 3:15-16), so can I. One hard saying in the Apostle Paul’s writing is his remark in 1 Cor. 15:29…
