Articles
Scotland, Psalms, and the Garden of Good and Evil
The psalmist warns of a time when the "foundations" are destroyed, when the principles upon which a civilization is based are eroded and give way. The civilization of Scotland was a great civilization. "Britannia ruled the Waves" for several hundred years, and Scotland played an important role in British world dominance. What were its strengths? What were its foundations? more...
Observing the Sabbath
We have allowed the pendulum to swing from legalism right on over to libertinism, and have all but completely thrown out the Fourth Commandment. Methodist Bishop Arthur Moore observed that his grandfather's generation referred to Sunday as the "holy Sabbath," his father's to the "Sabbath," and his to "Sunday." more...
Modesty
Modest dress is required, in keeping with the dignity of the place as well as the solemnity of the occasion. Whatever you strip off the wedding dress afterward to turn it into a party dress is not at issue... more...
Sonship: An Adequate Psychology of Christian Experience?
"It's just a matter of emphasis," the defenders of the Sonship program claim. But a growing number of PCA pastors see not emphasis but harmful imbalance and error. The endeavor to highlight one aspect of Christian truth may in itself be legitimate. It only becomes problematic when its counterpoint is not merely de-emphasized, but inaccurately represented. more...
The Worship of the Ancient Church
The elements from the ancient Church of preaching, public reading of Scripture, prayer, hymnody and psalmody, and the Lord's Supper, as well as the observance of the Lord's Day and the development of feast days, will be examined and developments evaluated. more...
Human Nature and Law
"Who are you to impose your morality on us?" snarled an angry radio talk show host, repeating a question that is asked a thousand times a day. The assumption behind the question is that moral choices are entirely a matter of personal choice and preference. The pervasiveness of moral relation is well known and frequently lamented in our circles. more...
A Consistent Ethic of Life
There is a growing and increasingly damaging disconnect between the 6th and 7th Commandments. The sixth, forbidding murder, is based on the larger principle of the sanctity of life; the seventh, forbidding adultery, is based on the larger principle of the sanctity of marriage. These two Commandments are mutually dependent--they do not and cannot stand alone. more...
Living Wisely
For sometime now I have been thinking about how Christians must largely live their lives in the land "between the lines" of Scripture's explicit statements. There are relatively few commands which directly address specific behavior. more...
Learning and Loving the Trinity Psalter
Among the many ambitions that the creators of the Trinity Psalter have for their work is that the tunes recommended become known and beloved. more...
The Ebb & Flow of Lectio Continua Bible Reading In the English-Speaking Reformed Churches 1539-2000
A history and defense of chapter by chapter Bible reading in Worship services. more...
The Christian Use of Visual Art in Worship Today
A defense for the visually simple and reverent Worship. more...
Abortion and the Christian Church
The question that faces the church is forced onto us by the 6th Commandment and the Christian understanding of the sanctity of human life. God calls the church to the aid of the weak and helpless, to be their help and defender. Since Scripture regards unborn life as human life, we cannot but take up their cause... more...
An Evangelical and Reformed Faith
We are at once catholic, Protestant, and Reformed. more...
Childrearing in a Hostile Culture
It is almost unbelievable to me how crude America's public life has become. It has become so bad that even secular commentators are concerned (e.g., recent issue of U.S. News and World Report). Perhaps we have been newly sensitized to vulgarity by the recent spat of Jane Austin movies, which portray life in a more restrained, genteel, well-mannered era. Indeed life then was so different from our life today that one commentator likened it to a visit to Mars, to a culture utterly unlike our own. Does the Christian community have an interest in promoting a more polite society, or is this a matter of indifference to us? more...
Core Values for Church Planting
We are in a transitional time for the Christian Church in modern culture, and in particular for Presbyterianism. Many mainline churches around us have fallen prey to liberalism of various types, while many evangelical churches look more like the culture than the church. more...
What is Man?
"What is man," the Psalmist asked long, long ago. His answer was exuberant: "Thou has made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty!" The answer that is being given today is not so clear. Then as now, there is no more important question for our civilization to answer than this one. more...
God Gave Us Bodies
Much of the religious thought of the world goes something like this: The real world is the invisible, "spiritual" world. The physical, material world that we see is either an illusion, or evil, or in some other sense a barrier to the soul's welfare. Spiritual progress is made by denying the "flesh" its appetites in order to focus one's energy upon the spiritual. more...
The Five Points of Calvinism
The subjects of "Calvinism," "Puritanism," "predestination," and "election" do not have happy associations in the popular mind. Hear these terms and the mind imagines colorless landscapes, black suits and black hats, faces frowning under the weight of a hopeless fatalism, a joyless, harsh, critical, and legalistic religion. That this is an image created largely by an unsympathetic academic community seems not to be known by most. That it may be inaccurate and false seems not to have occurred to but a few. more...
The Evangelical Faith
On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk nailed to the door of the Wittenburg Castle Church "95 Theses" or "Complaints" against abuses in the church of his day. Unwittingly Martin Luther started a revolution which forever altered the face of Western Civilization, and through it the world. In a word, the reformation led to freedom: The freedom of the individual conscience, freedom in the social order, and intellectual freedom. more...
The Church as it was Meant to be
Periodically, in the history of the church the cry has sounded to reform and cleanse the church, and to return it to the purity and simplicity of the apostolic era. While taking care not to overly idealize the first generation of Christians (after all, the church at Corinth was a branch of the early church!), we have grown to appreciate the appeal of such a return. What vitality was present in the apostolic church! What energy, what boldness, what progress, what success! more...
The Kind of Government we Want
During each political season talk surfaces about a "religious" or "cultural" war that is being waged in the United States today. The press and media sometimes have responded to such language with shock and indignation, as though this were an ill-suited and inflammatory description of current political realities. Actually, thinking people have been talking of "culture war†for several years. more...
The Lord's Supper
Each Wednesday evening at Trinity College in Bristol, England, we observed Holy Communion. While walking down the old stone steps on the way to the chapel for that service, one of those discoveries began to unfold for me. It suddenly occurred to me to ask, "What are we doing?" I knew most of the theology of the sacrament, so what I was really asking was this: "What is it that I am supposed to be doing during the Communion Service?" I had been in Sunday School and Church all my life and yet I don't recall ever having it explained to me. What does one do during the Communion Service? And what is its meaning? more...
The Stones Cry Out
One hundred and seventy years ago the first sanctuary on this site was completed. The building which stands here today is a near replica of that first one, destroyed by fire in l889, and rebuilt in 1892. The question which I would like to pose for our consideration is this: why did those responsible for this edifice build as they did? Why is the architecture as it is? Are there reasons for the arrangement of the stones? more...
Why Plant and Grow PCA Churches?
The Presbyterian Church in America is putting enormous energy and resources into church planting these days. One has only to read the "Report of the Committee on Mission to North America to the 22nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America" in the Minutes of the Twenty-Second General Assembly (pp. 540-61) to verify this. In light of this fact, we-both of us ordained ministers in the PCA-want you to reflect with us on the simple question, Why? Why should the PCA bother? Why should a local PCA church support these MNA efforts with its "askings" and other benevolences? more...
Worship and Music Today
Amongst conservative Presbyterians these days a debate is heating up, and shall before long burst into open conflict over the worship of the church. While division is always a scandal in the church, this is one occasion when at least we can say that the subject is worthy of a good fight and even a denominational realignment. Nothing that we do is as important as our worship. more...
Why the Reformed Faith?
I would like for us to consider why one should be an adherent to the Reformed faith. By "Reformed" I mean that tradition which traces its roots back to Calvin, and perhaps, one might argue, Augustine before him. But mainly we refer to the 16th Century reforms of the corruptions of the late Medieval and Renaissance church, and the movement that it spawned. We refer to the Calvinistic heritage emanating from Geneva, resulting in the Swiss, Dutch, and German Reformed churches, and in the English-speaking world, the Scottish Reformed Church, known as Presbyterian, English Puritanism, New England Puritanism, and well, Old Princeton. more...
The History of Psalm Singing in the Christian Church
The canonical Book of Psalms properly may be viewed as the Bible's own devotional book. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made this point in his brief work, The Psalms - Prayer Book of the Bible. Indeed it is the primary source from which all other devotional books have drawn. "The Psalter is the great school of prayer," said Bonhoeffer elsewhere. Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), for example, quotes the Psalms more than the gospels in his The Imitation of Christ, "the most popular of all Christian devotional books." more...