Auburn Avenue Kerfluffle (AAK) and Transitive Verbs

Always trying to be helpful, I would like to suggest something else that might help good Reformed folks out of the impasse we have gotten ourselves into. In the current debate over faith alone, obedient faith, faith and obedience, and so on, we have a tendency to reify things like faith and obedience, and then …

Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) Cool Quote #7

“Surely the Sacraments can remind us of grace, help us to appreciate grace, and exhort us to walk in grace, but do they actually give us the grace promised in the Gospel? The Reformed and Presbyterian confessions answer “yes” without hesitation. A Sacrament not only consists of the signs (water, bread and wine), but of …

Objective Christians and Husbands

In a recent book entitled The Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Rick Phillips says this: “Eventually, the evangelicals gave in to that pressure, agreeing that if you are baptized you are a Christian, even if you deny the deity of Christ and the atoning work of the cross. This is of the greatest importance …

Strange Alliances

A specter is haunting the Reformed world — the specter of biblically grounded teaching on marriage, family, and elder qualifications. The threat is causing new ecumenical alliances to form, all calculated to meet the rising and imminent danger. TR Frank Smith is teaming up with openness theology, rabid anti-theonomist John Robbins is shoulder to shoulder …

John Robbins and the Council of Trent

The controversy over justification by faith shows no signs of letting up. Every day I hear from some new quarter that the hubbub continues. One of the larger ironies in all this is that men who have abandoned the historic, Protestant understanding of faith have accused other men (who have not abandoned it) of doing …

Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) Cool Quote #6

“Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we give you eternal praise and thanks, that you have granted and bestowed upon this child your fellowship, that you have born him again to yourself through your holy baptism, that he has been incorporated into Your beloved Son, our only Savior, and is now your child and heir.” Strasbourg Psalter …

Anabaptists in Puritan Face Paint

When was the first appearance of the strict regulative principle? And what does this tell us about certain deep affinities between certain streams of the Reformed faith and the streams of other communions? I have before charged that some of the pietists in the Reformed world are completely at odds with their own heritage. And …