“Efficacious grace is misunderstood if it is perceived as duress brutally exerted upon the soul. Grace is irresistible in the sense that it operates with the compulsion of overwhelming love. It so inclines the enslaved will that it abandons base affections and desires the good and holy that is supremely manifested in Christ.”   There... Continue Reading

“Friends, we owe the world, the flesh and the devil nothing! All they promised was spiritual death, followed by physical death, followed by eternal death. So let us see our wicked flesh or wicked nature for what it is, and let us exterminate it. This is what people do who are spiritual alive.”   How about some good news... Continue Reading

“Scott Swain and Michael Allen’s Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation argues, however, that it isn’t necessary to choose between a Reformation identity and a catholic heritage. Indeed, in their account, “to be reformed means to go deeper into true catholicity, not to move away from catholicity.”   Is it... Continue Reading

“When advised to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, Secretary of State Dulles, the son of a Presbyterian minister, icily responded that “he had long felt that no men should arrogate the power to decide that the future of mankind would benefit by an action entailing the killing of tens of millions... Continue Reading

“Church members in Germany are required by law to pay tax to fund church activities, which is collected by the government. Under German law, anyone who was baptized as a child is automatically a member of the church and obliged to pay the tax, charged as a percentage of their income, regardless of their beliefs... Continue Reading

“The ruling clears the way for a March 10 hearing in Portland in a highly charged case centering on the business owners’ religious beliefs and alleged violation of their customers’ civil rights. In Oregon, such contested civil rights cases can be heard before an administrative law judge or taken to civil court.”   The long-running legal... Continue Reading

“I have met some exceptionally intelligent people who cannot understand the Christian gospel. They hear its message as if it were a lecture on morality. Yet the gospel is not difficult to understand. The problem lies within us—in our spiritual blindness. If there is resistance in the heart to loving God, there will be resistance... Continue Reading

“The real issue for me has to do with the proper weapons for intellectual warfare. As a participant in many dialogues—ecumenical and interfaith—I have often encountered criticisms from fellow evangelicals who tell me that we do not have the leisure for the “niceties” of polite discussion with people with whom we disagree.”   In a... Continue Reading

“Assuming that a child has been well catechized and raised in a reasonably normal Christian way, i.e., that the child has been lovingly disciplined, that he has been included in public worship and that the family has attended faithfully to the means of grace (preaching of the Word and the sacraments as appropriate) parents might... Continue Reading

“Nothing in the Bible encourages us to give sex the exalted status it has in our culture, as if finding our purpose, our identity, and our fulfillment all rest on what we can or cannot do with our private parts. Jesus is the fullest example of what it means to be human, and he never... Continue Reading