I passed a milestone today that may be worthy of comment. John Calvin (1509-1564), Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), and J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) — the three Johns — did not live to see their fifty-sixth birthday. In fact, Calvin and Edwards both died just short of their fifty-fifth birthday. I, on the other hand, made it… Read More→
All Frame and his students all the time this week. Pardon the obsession. Justin Taylor continues to aggregate with a post about the value of reading Calvin’s Institutes. He includes several quotations from J. I. Packer (though why gospel-co-allies should pay attention to Barth I’m not sure): The Institutes is one of the wonders of… Read More→
Now that I’ve finished all six seasons of the “Larry Sanders Show,” which still comes highly recommended as arguably the funniest and most poignant treatments of celebrity in Hollywood, I am free to flip channels. (Those who haven’t seen the show need to understand that after his monologue, before going to commercial, Larry would say… Read More→
The Frenchman’s discussion of union at the beginning of book three of the Institutes is slight compared to his treatment of union when explaining the Lord’s Supper. I have often wondered why the unionists who give so much weight to Calvin in discussing the doctrine are not leading a program of liturgical renewal that would… Read More→
An arresting little wrinkle in the current popularity of Calvinism among those who don’t baptize their infants and sometimes speak in tongues (and don’t belong to a Reformed church — redundant, I know), is the notion that Calvinists are mean. Justin Taylor is apparently on vacation and has bloggers filling in for him. Jared Wilson’s… Read More→
Calvin makes it easy; you only have to get over the National Covenant, Kuyper, Bahnsen, and Wilson: My kingdom is not of this world. By these words he acknowledges that he is a king, but, so far as was necessary to prove his innocence, he clears himself of the calumny; for he declares, that there… Read More→
I continue to be amazed by the decibels of hostility and venom heaped upon 2k. From bloggers like Nelson Kloosterman, James K. A. Smith, David Koyzis, Doug Wilson, Steven Wedgeworth, Rabbi Bret and the Bayly Bros., to your average and pseudonymous commenters at various Reformed blogs, many Reformed Protestants and evangelicals believe that 2k theology… Read More→
After going on for thousands of comments with theonomic critics of 2k theology, I now have a better sense for why the governmental theory of the atonement is plausible to some Christians. Whenever I teach about New School Presbyterian theology, and its toleration if not advocacy of the governmental view, I joke with students that… Read More→
24/7/52/12 Christians
Our relentless and erstwhile defender of all things Jonathan Edwards made a remarkable assertion in his interactions with other Old Lifers. He wrote: If confessionalists are just going to church on Sunday, affirming the confession, taking the sacrament and just waiting for Christ to come again, then they are being lazy. If confessionalists are not… Read More→