One of the landmark documents of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-1653) is the Confession of Faith. This confession was created to provide a doctrinal basis for unity across the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Although in God’s…
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…
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…
“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…
My Sunday school teacher posed this question during class a few years ago. The question surprised me because the answer seemed obvious. If God is so far beyond my comprehension, how could he be simple? Therefore, he must be complex,…
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination…
Every society has a rulebook, but living in one’s birth culture creates a blind embrace of its practices, norms, and expectations. We believe certain things about speech, social cues, and even driving habits with little awareness of what we prize…
Not long ago I received an email asking a question. Its impetus was from the Westminster Confession of Faith. The person wanted to know how the Westminster Assembly could have taught that God is impassible when the Scriptures clearly teach…
Chad B Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith (Banner of Truth, 2014). Chad van Dixhoorn once described a dream of his in which he was puzzling over the handwriting of the original…
My wife and I are planning a fairly substantial gardening project in our front yard (she more enthusiastically than I). We’re going to uproot some bushes that no longer seem to fit, and are planning to plant other flowers in…
