After the unsettling conversation with the Canadian convert, Harkness wondered how he might help other Christians celebrate the power of God’s sustaining hand in our perseverance and have this sweet truth bore deep into our souls. The answer was obvious for a musician like Harkness: a song. He mentioned the need in a letter to... Continue Reading

The problem is not simply that the American church seems to be currently reckoning with the cost of decades of systemic failures and infidelity within the church. The surrounding world has not simply stopped to gawk at us as we stumble about like a drunk on an especially bad bender. It has, rather, continued going... Continue Reading

Jonathan Edwards called this book the best ever written after the Bible, and surely one reason is that it is thoroughly biblical. Consider, for example, the order of Mastricht’s chapters: each begins with an “Exegetical Part,” which carefully examines a particular text of Scripture in order to lay the foundation for the Dogmatic, Elenctic, and... Continue Reading

In churches where the classic hymns are still sung, church members can exert their influence to keep this great tradition alive. We can listen to these same hymns in recorded form. Ministers who know the great hymns can make effective use of them by quoting verses and lines in sermons. Mainly, though, we can practice... Continue Reading

So, okay. I’ll buy it.  I’ll review it.  But will this book transform my life?  It will not.  It will go on the shelf with all of the other books that breathlessly present themselves as “the answer” to “the problem” that “the church” has lost some time between 120AD and 400AD. But I’m simply not... Continue Reading

“And yet one of my biggest observations about Cohick’s book is how history teaches us that some things do not change—in between the lines history, that is. While we are more aware of what the literary documents and their attached ideologies and agendas say, Cohick couples this research with some of her own, looking at... Continue Reading

I appeal to the glowing endorsement of the book from Jonathan Edwards, which is included on the back cover. Comparing Mastricht with Turretin, he noted, “they are both excellent.” Yet he added that Turretin was fuller on controversial points while Mastricht was better on the whole as a “universal system of divinity.” This led him... Continue Reading

It’s not just that this technology allows us to stay “plugged in” all the time, it’s that it gives us the sense that we are tapped into something greater than ourselves. The narratives of meaning that have always filled our lives with justification and wonder are multiplied endlessly and immediately for us in songs, TV... Continue Reading

While Weinandy’s Roman Catholicism is evident in his treatment of the Lord’s Supper, this is a book that Protestants will otherwise find most helpful. I for one will never be able to preach the gospel narrative in quite the same way again.     The first is Thomas Weinandy’s Jesus Becoming Jesus.  Weinandy is a Franciscantheologian who is well-known in orthodox Protestant circles for his... Continue Reading

Idolatry ultimately is about our conception of who God is. If people have a significantly wrong conception of who God is, then they commit themselves to a false and distorted conception of God and thus a false God. This becomes tantamount to idolatry. This is why God’s people must know his word. Only by knowing... Continue Reading