A Reason to be Thankful
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…
Tag Christian Living
Studying the Confession: The Proof Texts
When it comes to the Westminster Confession of the Faith, we often do not think very much about how we might be able to study the Confession’s use of Scripture. In fact, most of us probably do not get very…
Girolamo Zanchi – a Theologian of Peace and Comfort
On November 19, 1590, the Italian Reformer Girolamo Zanchi died while visiting the University of Heidelberg where he had once been professor of theology. He was buried with honors. His epitaph read, “Here lie the bones of the Italian Zanchi,…
The Great Neglected Mandate
Last words are important and often intriguing and none more so than the last words of Jesus. They are best remembered as expressed by Matthew at the end of his Gospel where Jesus tells the Eleven, “All authority in heaven…
Assurance and Preaching the Word
On any given Sunday there are, sitting in the pews of church, myriad kinds of different people. There are, of course, the faithful who have battled well against unbelief throughout the previous week and are hungering and thirsting for the…
Assurance: a Pastoral Conversation
The best doctors are diagnosticians. Those who have hidden the taxonomy of pathogens in their cerebral cortex and are able to ply their knowledge to the often distorted complex of a patient’s woes – that, is a doctor indeed. The…
Augustine, Happiness, and a Birthday Cake
If Augustine of Hippo was with us today, he might spend his birthday as he did shortly after his conversion, when he lived in Cassiciago, 25 miles north of Milan, Italy. “After a meal light enough as not to hinder…
Assurance and the Westminster Confession of Faith
“The greatest of all Protestant heresies is assurance.” Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621)[1] Can we know that we’re saved? That question was at the heart of the Reformation. Rome taught that professing believers could never be certain of their salvation. For…
Doctrine Alone
The season of the Reformation ‘Solas’ has just ended and we have been reminded of the ‘aloneness’ of Scripture, grace, faith, Christ and the glory of God. But, hopefully, we will have also been reminded too that none of these…
Assurance and the Heidelberg Catechism
The Heidelberg Catechism, penned mostly by Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, is among the most beloved and best written statements of Reformed Christianity. The forms of assurance discussed in this catechism fall into two broad categories: 1) those benefits which…