This blog post is probably at least twenty years too late, if not much more so. Christians in America lost the gay marriage debate long before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision. When the best response we can give to why the government shouldn’t legally recognize same-sex marriage is “because the Bible says it’s […]
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Discussing abortion, Scholastic-style
October 15, 2020 
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In the spirit of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, what follows is an attempt to tackle the topic of abortion according to a medieval-scholastic disputation. The topic is divided into four key questions (philosophical, biblical, circumstantial, and legal) that follow the format of Aquinas’s Summa, first setting forth the objections, then stating the opposing traditional view […]
Continue reading How prepared are you to answer pro-choice objections against the pro-life case?
October 9, 2020 1 Comment
I recently finished reading The Case for Life by Scott Klusendorf (Crossway, 2009), which presents a compelling case for the personhood of human beings from the moment of fertilization. It also made me realize just how underequipped I was to respond to so many common pro-choice objections. What I’ve done here is gather the objections […]
Continue reading What was Adam’s reward? A summary/commentary of Francis Turretin
July 11, 2020 2 Comments
One of the ongoing intramural Reformed debates centers on what would have happened to Adam if he hadn’t fallen into sin. Would he have continued in an earthly paradise? Or would he have been elevated to a higher, heavenly stage? Would his obedience have counted as “merit”? Does that make Eden a kind of temporary […]
Continue reading Legislating Morality? A Review of Making Men Moral by Robert P. George
January 13, 2020 2 Comments
The idea of “legislating morality” is pretty unpopular these days. It grates against a widely shared assumption that people have a right to do whatever they want, as long as they don’t harm anyone else. The idea may also raise alarms about the danger of government overreach, perhaps even evoking images of a dystopian, totalitarian […]
Continue reading What Is Marriage? A Summary of a Secular Defense of Man and Woman
November 4, 2019 2 Comments
Sometimes the most obvious things in life are the hardest to define. For example, how does one define beauty? Or manhood? Or marriage? Traditionally, such features of human existence were taken for granted as objective and self-evident, requiring no defense. But things have changed. The obvious is no longer obvious. It’s not quite right to […]
Continue reading Does nature need addition? Bavinck against the donum superadditum
August 23, 2019 3 Comments
One of the central points of disagreement among the various Christian traditions is the question of the relationship of grace and nature. Should we say that grace opposes nature? Affirms nature? Perfects nature? Flanks nature? The answer that Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck famously gives is that grace restores nature: it gives back to us what […]
Continue reading Thornwell’s Inaugural Address of the Confederate Presbyterian Church
April 1, 2019 8 Comments
Note: In 1861, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was deeply divided over the issue of slavery, as well as the broader matter of the church’s role in addressing social and political controversies. It was a question of jurisdiction as much as one of morality. In May, the PCUSA General Assembly had […]
Continue reading Review: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham
February 9, 2019 0 Comments
If I had to pick my all-time favorite book on the historical Jesus, it would probably be Jesus and the Victory of God by N.T. Wright. However, a close second would be the newly-released second edition of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by University of St. Andrews NT professor Richard Bauckham […]
Continue reading Doubting Thomists: John Bolt’s defense of (the real) Aquinas against his Reformational critics
September 26, 2018 3 Comments
Protestants have always had a complicated relationship with the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. On the one hand, the Reformers rejected many of his views on salvation and the sacraments. On the other hand, even in the heat of post-Reformation polemics, Protestants and Catholics were still able to find much common ground in his teachings […]
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