The Epiphany of Love
Although for many churches, the celebration of Christ’s Nativity is over for another year, for many others it is yet to come. They will celebrate the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th and on into the Sunday that follows. In…
Tag Church History
Teach Me to Pray!: Our Father
The morning air was still cold when Martin Luther entered the shop of Peter the barber. Peter was not only the local barber but a surgeon able to perform minor surgeries like bloodletting and tooth extraction. Likely his specialty cut…
Book Review: Reformed Catholicity
Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015). 168pp. Paperback. $21.00. Catholicity is as important as it is often misunderstood. In search of a deeper…
History: Helping Church to Love it
You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 11:19, NASB It’s somewhat ironic for…
William Tyndale and Sola Scriptura
William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament, first published in 1526, was met with sharp disapproval in England – not only because it was common knowledge that Scriptures should not be placed in the hands of the uneducated masses,…
History: Why Read it? A Pastoral Perspective
I am an avid history reader. I have been since about the age of five. That’s 48 years of history reading. I became an avid church history reader when I came to faith in Christ in 1983. Since then church…
History: Reading Biography
When I was in elementary school, I discovered the joy of reading biographies. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the shelf containing a series about important figures in American history. I loved the stories and was disappointed when…
Young Luther’s Christmas
On December 22, 1898 the New York Observer wished its readers a “Merry Merry Christmas to All.” Following that wish was a wonderful gift. On every page of the Observer was something to direct the reader’s thoughts to the reason…
History: Why Read It?
Why should history have to make a case for itself? No one questions why we should study mathematics or science. The humanities are always having to justify their existence in a way that is not expected of other disciplines. Even…
Morals and Theology at the start of the Reformation
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…