I have long thought that the FV is asking some important and even crucial questions but coming up with some unfortunate answers—answers that move it, as it were, beyond the Reformed confessional reservation.  While the offer/reception model of sacramental efficacy as found in Calvin and the Westminster Confession does not answer all the questions we... Continue Reading

It is as if the sins of adultery or fornication are wrong, but a sort of normalized wrong, whereas homosexuality is a “weird” or “unusual” sin. What we fail to recognize is that every sin from the mildest gossip to the wildest orgy is a mark of the fall, proof of sins twisting God’s good... Continue Reading

First came the news of Mark Sanford’s victory in South Carolina’s First District to Congress. For anyone who remembers Sanford’s well publicized marital infidelity, it must have struck many observers as strange that evangelical Protestants — I hear South Carolina is thick with them — would return Sanford to public office. … And then came... Continue Reading

Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post saw through the smokescreen. “They lost me on the word women,” she wrote. Parker pointed to the argument “that any interference with the over-the-counter sale of Plan B to any female of any age is blocking a woman’s right to self-determination.” She retorted: “Fifteen-year-olds, where the Obama Administration wants... Continue Reading

Do you believe that Jesus will return to Earth someday? Then you probably don’t care about environmental devastation and the catastrophic loss of life of future generations. That’s the absurd conclusion drawn in an academic paper published in the latest issue of Political Research Quarterly. Do you believe that Jesus will return to Earth someday?... Continue Reading

Not everybody who moves to the suburbs wants to build a gargantuan McMansion and live the full-consumerist lifestyle. Not everyone who chooses to live in the city is driven by morally pure motives; they could be refusing one kind of consumerist narcissism for the sake of embracing a more attractive version of same. Anthony Bradley,... Continue Reading

As spiritual parents, we anticipate Christ in glory as he gathers in the nations under his Name alone, the only Name by which we are eternally known. We are able to enlarge God’s tent and ours far beyond parameters restricted by our own name or blood. By intimately ushering the motherless through the practical and... Continue Reading

Here are a few of the most prominent Christian objections to living in the suburbs. How many of them hold up to even a slight bit of scrutiny? Suburbs are inauthentic: I confess to not quite understanding what this means. Yes, suburban things are often newer and feature less exposed brick, but how is that... Continue Reading

We must remember that we are not entitled to dominant or majority status, to be a major social force, in this world or age. There is no kingdom in this world over which God has granted rule to Christians or His Church. Rather, our kingdom is that of Christ, which is not of this world.... Continue Reading

Justification is a marvelous gift, and I must continually remind myself that all my guilt has been washed away by Christ. But the problem is sin doesn’t only make me guilty legally; it also pollutes me morally. Even if I certain that I will not face God’s wrath for my impatient words to my wife,... Continue Reading