In every generation, the Christian church must restate its bedrock beliefs, answering the challenges and concerns of the day. In these books Holcomb leads us through centuries of creeds, councils, catechisms, and confessions—as well as the errors that occasioned them—and reveals their profound relevance for today.   “To know nothing of what happened before you were born,”... Continue Reading

Lack of repentance means a hard heart – and a hard heart is the worst heart.  It is called a heart of stone (Ezek. 36:26).  Hard-heartedness is a sin that grieves Christ (Mark 3:5).  A hard heart is not malleable; it is untuned for every duty.  Weep with Peter in repentance, for a hard heart is... Continue Reading

My hope is that Christians will be motivated by this book to not merely “get in the Easter spirit” during one particular season of the year, but that every Sunday would be an occasion for us to meditate and think upon the death burial and resurrection of Christ. A book like this is just the... Continue Reading

Paul’s doctrine of justification did target not only a Jewish view, but any human view, that presumes to make good works any part of the ground of our being found righteous before God. “For Paul, God’s gift of salvation [i.e., justification] necessarily excludes any part to be played by God-pleasing ‘works’ since human beings are incapable of doing them.” “Paul sees the only... Continue Reading

What the Bible says about marriage is this: God designed it for one man and one woman, to serve His creation, and to provide a living portrait of His redemptive love. Forget the so-called “clobber passages.” Rationalize away Paul’s words if you can. There is no way around the theology of sex, marriage and salvation... Continue Reading

Holmes is concerned to defend the thesis that apart from some relatively minor disagreement and development, the doctrine of the Trinity was basically settled by ecumenical consensus in the fourth century, enjoyed ‘essential stability’ until the eighteenth century, and has been the accepted position of the church, with no significant modification, until the modern period... Continue Reading

The Word of God will always be under attack. It has been so since the serpent said to the woman, “Has God really said?” So books like Taking God at His Word are perennially relevant. But it is not just the authority and inerrancy of the Bible which are attacked. In evangelical, Bible-affirming circles the sufficiency and... Continue Reading

When he begins his book, Matthew Vines argues that experience should not drive our interpretation of the Bible. But it is his experience of what he calls a gay sexual orientation that drives every word of this book. It is this experiential issue that drives him to relativize text after text and to argue that... Continue Reading

Some have great confidence in skeptical scholarship, and I once did, perhaps more than anyone else. If anyone thinks they are assured in their unbelief, I was more committed: born of unbelieving parents, never baptized or dedicated; on scholarly credentials, a PhD from a secular university; as to zeal, mocking the church; as to ideological... Continue Reading

“Jacob’s book is engaging, well written, and quite accessible to non-specialists. His treatment of the Oxford Movement’s response to the Gorham case in the nineteenth century is stimulating and insightful, as is his explanation of Gregory Dix’s remarkable impact on liturgical scholarship.”   Baylor University’s Alan Jacobs has written an elegant history of an extraordinary... Continue Reading