Hyssop isn’t much of a shrub. It grows clinging to walls and rocks around the Mediterranean. It is however important for its cleansing properties, physical and ritualistic. Under the old covenant, there were priests and sacrifices. But there was no…
The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the essential doctrines of Christianity. At its most basic definition, the Trinity means that there is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. From the time of the early church,…
Delighting in the Trinity, IVP Academic, 2012. Paperback, 135 pages Reviewed by John Hartley At the risk of sounding cheeky, Michael Reeves’ book, Delighting in the Trinity (IVPress, 2012) is delightful. It is the kind of book that should be…
Some of the most influential women in church history were princesses or queens, who had the ability to establish a state religion according to their convictions. At a time when cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion) was in…
God’s Providence is a wonderful thing. The Westminster divines spoke of it in these terms: ‘God’s works of providence are, his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions’ (WSC 11). The Heidelberg Catechism…
On the vigil of Easter in 379, a group composed mostly of monks and women rushed into a church, attacked the congregants, wounded the preacher, and killed another bishop. They were not terrorists. They were followers of the doctrines of…
Benjamin B. Warfield wrote a little article for the Homiletic Review in 1897 titled, “The Indispensableness of Systematic Theology to the Preacher.” As anything written by Warfield, it is a thoughtful and edifying piece with a clear aim. According to…
We often pray the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer after sinning. We should learn to pray the sixth petition before similarly sinning again, remembering, ye have not because ye ask not (James 4:2). The essence of the sixth petition,…
If all your paperwork rolled like a sea over your desk, you’d struggle to navigate and prepare your tax returns. If you blanketed your computer’s desktop with all your digital files, you’d smother the writing of a departmental report. So…
In this series, we are examining how the Lord’s prayer shapes our prayer life. In this post, we want to apply the phrase “…Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…” How does this statement in the Lord’s prayer…
