In 1959, Jaroslav Pelikan, then a Lutheran professor of church history at Yale Divinity School, published The Riddle of Roman Catholicism. Writing on the eve of the Second Vatican Council and in the early phase of the Cold War, Pelikan sought to address the vast ignorance about Roman Catholicism on the part of most American […]
Zacharius Ursinus is not one of the most well-known people of the Reformation. Unfortunately, even some who read and hold to the Biblical truths taught in the Heidelberg Catechism do not know that he is one of its authors. This is partly due to the fact that Ursinus would rather have been left alone as […]
The Reformed Church in France fared better than most Protestant Churches in Catholic countries in the seventeenth century. In 1589, King Henry of Navarre denounced Protestantism and joined the Catholic Church in order to become King Henry IV of France. By doing this, he opened the door to legalization of the Protestant religion. In 1598, […]
Readings: Judges 2:11–23; Judges 3:7–12 Judges 1 and 2 provided us with the historical background of the book of Judges, serving as an introduction to the stories that follow. Judges 2:11–23 gave us a paradigm, a general pattern for the action of the rest of the book (Israel sins, God sends an oppressor, the people […]
Reading: Judges 3:12–31 Judges 3:12–30 presents the story of Ehud, possibly one of the most troubling passages for commentators and pastors. Philip P. Elliot, in his exposition on the book of Judges, says this: “By even the most elementary standard of ethics, [Ehud’s] deception and murder of Eglon stand condemned. Passages like this, when encountered […]
In 1677, when John Owen (1616–1683) published his book, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith through the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ; Explained, Confirmed, and Vindicated, the Protestant doctrine of justification was still engulfed in controversy. “In my judgment,” said the English Calvinist, “Luther spake the truth when he said, ‘When the article of […]
Reformed Theology has reached a midlife crisis. In the past decades of existence warped conceptions of assurance, covenant theology, and the sacraments, took center stage. One such theological system that in part caused this debate is a school of thought known as Auburn theology, or more popularly, the Federal Vision. Auburn theologians wanted to objectify […]