Stop Lying in Worship: Justice is More than a Good Line in a Gospel Song…

On this blog, it’s not an uncommon occurrence for me to address the failings of “contemporary evangelicalism” as a whole, painting with broad strokes and illustrative generalizations, the bleak picture that the American church has found itself in. However, today I’m bringing it home; to my own front door. Conservative Reformed Protestantism, lend me your [...]

Reproductive Self-Determination and the Bondage of the Pill: Preaching like Calvinists and Procreating like Arminians

From Chapter 3 of the 1997 UNFPA “State of World Population”:
“In most of the world the initiation, timing and final level of fertility are now recognized as a matter of conscious choice. When asked in surveys, men and women are increasingly able to indicate how many [...]

IVF and Parental Dominion III: The Limited Dominion of Man

(The following is part 3 of a multi-part series entitled “In vitro Fertilization and Parental Dominion“, modified from a paper I wrote for an M.Div. course in Marriage, Infertility, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, November 2007)
With few, if any, mainstream voices warning of the dangers of the technological fetishism in which we find ourselves, the infertile [...]

Heaven Taken By Storm

Along with the stack of other books that I’m reading this semester for class, I just started reading a book by Thomas Watson (apart from class) entitled “Heaven Taken By Storm: Showing the Holy Violence A Christian is to Put Forth in the Pursuit After Glory”. In chapter one, I found a perfect example of [...]

The necessity and utility of this exercise of prayer

The following was excerpted from John Calvin’s work entitled “Of Prayer - A Perpetual Exercise of Faith. The Daily Benefits Derived From It.“:
“FROM the previous part of the work we clearly see how completely destitute man is of all good, how devoid of every means of procuring his own salvation. Hence, if he [...]

Where Do Babies Come From?: Why It’s Crucial That We View Children As Begotten, Not Made

So where do babies come from?
The answer to this simple question has the ability to totally change a Christians’ view on marriage and family. And if we answer it truthfully and consistently, I believe that many of our questions become much clearer.
More than likely, you’ve heard the old pagan legend that babies are brought to [...]

I Think I’m Supporting Ron Paul (too)…thanks to Francis Schaeffer

Like many (I’ll even say most) conservative evangelicals today, I’ve had to take some hard considerations on who I’ll be supporting for the 2008 Presidential race. As a one-time avid Mike Huckabee supporter, I’ve had nothing but good news come out of the campaign trial. For all intents and purposes, it would seem that I had [...]

One Greater Than Calvin: The Source Of Our Doctrine

Keeping with the continual stream of great, convicting, and humbling quotes from Abraham Kuyper’s “Lectures on Calvinism“, the post below sheds a little light on how such a mighty work of God was wrought amongst Reformation theology, which rescued for us a gospel that, as Charles Spurgeon says, “would lay man low, and give to [...]

The Five-Points of Political Calvinism: Take this Tulip to the Ballot Box

My good buddy recently finished a research paper on the Calvinistic philosophy of Abraham Kuyper and Francis Schaeffer in a political context. For all you Reformed politicos out there (and those who’d like to be), I’d like to turn your attention to these five-points of political Calvinism as developed by heady musings‘ Jonathan McGregor. I’ve [...]

The Church That Calvin Built? Not quite. God Was Sovereign Long Before Him…

Here is another chunk from Abraham Kuyper in which he lays the foundation for the rest of his six “Lectures on Calvinism“. In the excerpt below, he discusses the historical, theological, and social context of Reformed theology - and its value as a life-system. Set aside a few moments and be engaged…
‘BH
“Clearness of presentation demands [...]