Note: I originally presented the following paper in January 2013 for the second annual meeting of the Theological Fellowship at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. Introduction One of the ongoing debates within the evangelical world centers on the question of infant baptism—that is, should we baptize professing believers only, or should we baptize both […]
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A Neocalvinist Ecclesiology
September 9, 2015 
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Over at Cardus, Professor David Koyzis (whose book Political Visions and Illusions I have recently reviewed here) has written this article on the institutional church. The distinction between church as organism and as institution lies at the heart of Kuyper and Bavinck’s ecclesiology, and it is worth repeating some of Koyzis’s main points here (and I paraphrase): The […]
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Review: Political Visions and Illusions, by David Koyzis
August 24, 2015 3 Comments
David Koyzis, Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies (IVP Academic, 2003). All humans long for redemption. We cannot escape the feeling that the world is not as it should be, and things need to be set right. Christians find the answer in Jesus Christ, whose coming kingdom will one day […]
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From Culture War Burnout to Cultural Faithfulness
August 13, 2015 1 Comment
The question of Christianity and cultural faithfulness has been one of my most passionate and personal questions; it’s also one of the more contentious questions facing the American Church today. The more you read, the more complicated the question becomes. As a friend of mine says often, “Everything is complicated and everything is connected.” How […]
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Review: Spiritual Friendship by Wesley Hill
August 10, 2015 1 Comment
Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Brazos, 2015). As an unmarried seminarian, I found myself surrounded by classmates who were married, many of them with children. It wasn’t uncommon for professors to verbally acknowledge and extend academic grace to students who were behind, tardy, or absent due to a […]
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Review: Cupid Is a Procrastinator: Making Sense of the Unexpected Single Life, by Kate Hurley
June 22, 2015 3 Comments
I happen to be in a very small minority. I’m in my thirties, I’m an ordained minister in the PCA, and I’m still single. As I get older, I’ve come to see more and more the blessings of singleness. I have learned to appreciate the freedom and simplicity of being able set my own schedule, […]
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Existential Apologetics: A Third Way beyond Classical and Presuppositional
June 15, 2015 6 Comments
This post is based on an adult Sunday school lesson that I taught at Riveroaks Reformed Presbyterian Church in Germantown, TN on June 14, 2015. It seems that most discussions on Christian apologetics these days have focused on two major schools of thought: classical and presuppositional. The classical folks trace their lineage back to Thomas […]
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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 […]
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Neo-Calvinism’s Blind Spots
April 14, 2015 0 Comments
Now I should begin by clarifying that I consider myself a neo-Calvinist. I believe that God’s kingdom is broader than the institutional church, and that redemption is not limited to just the “spiritual” part of our lives but also has social, political, and economic dimensions. I think that believers should be actively engaged in culture, […]
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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 […]
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