As I began preparing to teach a class on the New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP), I made use of a number of sources to guide my research. Most of my sources were coming from a broadly confessional Reformed perspective, and one stood out as especially worthy of mention. At only 125 pages, Richard Gaffin’s By Faith, […]
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Robert Rollock on the Merit of Christ
March 2, 2016 
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Robert Rollock was a 16th-century Scottish Reformed theologian, credited with developing the idea of a distinction between a covenant of works and a covenant of grace between God and man (aka “bicovenantalism”), and with helping bring Reformed theology to the British Isles. Although his work was influential for later mainstream Reformed theology, he was also […]
Continue reading Review: One Kingdom: The Practical Theology of John M. Frame, by John Barber
December 24, 2015 3 Comments
John Barber. One Kingdom: The Practical Theology of John M. Frame. Lakeland, FL: Whitefield Media, 2015. 346pp. Disclaimer: Although I have never personally met the author, we have been friends via social media for several months. When I heard that his book was being published, I offered to write this review for him. Dr. John […]
Continue reading Why I Might Become a Historic Premillennialist
May 13, 2015 17 Comments
I should probably start by giving a brief theological autobiography. From a very young age, I had bought into dispensational premillennialism. I read nearly all the Left Behind books as a teenager, becoming convinced that a pre-tribulational rapture was the biblical view. All that changed when I went to college, where I majored in history […]
Continue reading A Neo-Calvinist Critique of Common Grace?
April 10, 2015 0 Comments
The following is an excerpt from the work Christ and Culture by Klaas Schilder (1890-1952), in which Schilder challenges the popular doctrine of “common grace” as developed by Abraham Kuyper. His logic is rather clever here, and it has consequences for our understanding of the Christian’s relationship to non-Christian culture. Is God’s restraint of his judgment against sinners […]
Continue reading A Quick and Easy Chart on Two Kingdoms and Neo-Calvinism
March 26, 2015 7 Comments
The doctrine of “two kingdoms” has received a lot of attention in Reformed circles lately. Some say the idea is clearly Calvinistic, while others reject it as a “Lutheran” distinctive. To clear up some of the confusion over these issues, I recently created this chart and posted it publicly. It has generated a lot of […]
Continue reading Robert Lewis Dabney: A Review (Part Two)
December 2, 2014 1 Comment
This is Part Two of a review of Dr. Sean Lucas’ biography of the Southern theologian, Robert Dabney. In Part One of this review, readers were invited to consider the impact of Robert Lewis Dabney’s life and work. This overview of Dabney’s life shows that, like every minister, he was both a saint and a […]
Continue reading Robert Lewis Dabney: A Review (Part One)
December 2, 2014 3 Comments
This is Part One of a two-part review of Dr. Sean Lucas’ biography of the Southern theologian, Robert Dabney. Robert Lewis Dabney is one of the more polarizing figures in American Presbyterian history. Depending on whom you ask, Dabney was a staunch defender of biblical authority and the Westminster Standards, an important leader upholding the […]
Continue reading Calvinists and Lutherans on Law and Gospel (Part 2)
November 7, 2014 3 Comments
This is the second post in my two-part response to Lutheran minister Jordan Cooper’s critique of John Frame, Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando (Rev. Cooper’s critique can be found here, here, and here; part 1 of my response can be found here). Dr. Frame has called into question the traditional […]
Continue reading Calvinists and Lutherans on Law and Gospel (Part 1)
November 6, 2014 5 Comments
One of the ongoing debates within the Reformed world centers on the purported distinction between law and gospel. There are some who insist that such a distinction is an indispensable pillar the Protestant Reformation. But others see the distinction as a uniquely Lutheran doctrine that tends to eclipse the historic Reformed emphasis on the so-called […]
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