In the years just before the Reformation, a great number of Christian leaders saw the need for moral reform in Europe. The church was corrupt and the gap between biblical precepts and daily life seemed far too great for an…
I was in a store just a couple of days ago when a smiling clerk asked if she could help my wife and me with some pictures we were admiring. However, talk about beautiful pictures gave way to a less…
For those familiar with Thomas Chalmers, his name immediately conjures up a plethora of thoughts regarding his stature as a Christian leader and also his gifts and achievements in the work of the church. He was a man of exceptional…
A simple Google search of “Olympia Morata” and “feminist” yields 6,530 results. Some call her “a forgotten, feminist voice” or “a feminist in Renaissance Italy.” These definitions would have puzzled her. She was highly esteemed in her day, but…
In the Western world at least, the glory of the church seems to be fading fast. Far from those days when her influence was far-reaching and wide-ranging, her values and opinions respected and her numbers strong; she has become the…
The Bondage of the Will is one of Martin Luther’s most important and enduring works. It represents his greatest defense of the doctrine of predestination and was written as a response to Erasmus of Rotterdam. I have previously described the…
In occasion of Father’s Day, I diverge from the usual mini-bios to peek into the lives of some fathers who lived during the Reformation, with all the struggles and joys this task embraced. Busy Homes Moving from the peaceful,…
Three countries claim Anselm as their own. To the Italians, he is Anselmo d’Aosta (of Aosta, the Alpine city where he was born around 1033). To the French, he is Anselme du Bec (of Bec, where he first entered monastic…
“Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse upon Erasmus.” That quote appears in Martin Luther’s Table Talk, the same place where he called the Prince of the Humanists “the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth” and quipped that…
The grand storyline of the Bible can at times make depressing reading if we do not pay close attention to the gospel threads that hold it together. After its glorious beginning in the accounts of creation in Genesis, our high…
