Nothing but the sight of death impresses on us so viscerally a sense of finality. As Christians, we are comforted by faith in the resurrection and the life to come, but death nevertheless strikes our limited and sin-affected minds with…
Our English term conversion is not often used in our translations of the Bible. But lest we commit a word-concept fallacy, we should not conclude from this that the concept captured by our term conversion is infrequently found in Scripture.…
Jacques Lefèvre D’Etaples – An Early French Reformer The life of Jacques Lefèvre D’Etaples ran almost parallel to that of Martin Luther. Born around 1455 (28 years before Luther), Lefèvre died in 1536, when Luther was still teaching, preaching, and…
Historic testimony to Luther is grand. Not only have many of his letters, books, tracts, and sermons survived, but so have his table talks. Table Talk is a collection of Luther’s sayings amongst his friends. Thankfully, they have been preserved…
This is the third and final installment of this series. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here. Having laid down the foundation for how allowing for images of Christ indeed strikes at the vitals of various reformed…
The Dispute of Tirano and the Trial of Calvin’s Orthodoxy In the eventful sixteenth century, few people took notice of a court trial in a small town on the Italian side of the Alps. And yet, the stakes were high.…
Most theological and moral failures can be traced back to a wrong view of God. We charge God with being unfair only if we think he must submit to our concept of fairness. We will contentedly live one way in…
I love the writing of Iain Murray. I’ve probably recommended and given out more of his books than I do most others. And I can certainly say that I’ve benefitted from his historical insights and applications to such a degree…
Francis Turretin’s Italian Family The seventeenth-century Christian scholar Francis Turretin is well-known in Reformed circles. Little has been written about his life, probably under the assumption that the lives of scholars are generally uneventful. Since 2023 marks the 400th anniversary…
Pomponio Algerio and His Resolute Faith Most tourists to Rome stop by Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers, in Piazza Navona. Some drop a coin in the water and make a wish. Hardly anyone is aware that in…
