Sign of the Gospel: Why my children are being baptized (October 25, 2013)

My family has been members for years at Mars Hill Church. I served there in various ministries, as a Deacon, and for the past two years as a Pastor. This summer, we left Mars Hill to join Trinitas Church, a church plant within the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Although […]

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John Calvin on Supererogatory Works (Superfluous Works) (October 7, 2013)

Parable of the Master and Unprofitable Servant, Luke 17:5-10 In a surprising passage in the Institutes III.14.14-15, John Calvin affirms supererogatory works (or superfluous works)! Is Calvin affirming the Roman Catholic merit system for justification after all? No. Calvin quotes the parable of the unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10) to remind us that […]

Related: institutes of the christian religion, John Calvin, Parable of the Master and Unprofitable Servant, Supererogatory Works, Superfluous Works

John Calvin’s Eschatology (July 1, 2013)

John Calvin is a heavenly minded man, and throughout the institutes, he pessimistic about the number of people who will be saved. The Reformation was a great revival but the few Reformed city-states that existed were Geneva, Strasbourg, Zurich and a few spurious others, and their sum population was nothing […]

Related: eschatology, institutes of the christian religion, John Calvin, Lord's Prayer, post-millennialism, postmil, postmillennialism, Thy Kingdom Come

Karl Barth on the Five Abrogrations in the Federal Theology of Johannes Coccejus (June 26, 2013)

Peter A. Lillback suggested in his book, "Binding of God, The: Calvin's Role in the Development of Covenant Theology", that John Calvin had Proto-Covenant Theology ideas, because Covenant Theology was developed after Calvin by his followers. Calvin's teaching on Covenant Theology, especially in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book […]

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John Calvin’s Epidemiological Method [Institutes I.i] (February 14, 2013)

The opening sentences of the Institutes of the Christian Religion are almost as famous as the entire book itself, "Nearly all the wisdom we posses, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one […]

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John Calvin on the Roman Catholic Objections to the Reformation (February 1, 2013)

John Eck's Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutheranos (1526, 1536) John Calvin lists what he believes to be the basic objections the Roman Catholic Church held against the Reformation in the 16th Century. "They call it "new" and "of recent birth."  "They reproach it as "doubtful and uncertain" "They inquire whether it is right for […]

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The Reformation’s Lack of Miracles: A Response by John Calvin (January 28, 2013)

~ Updated and Revised: February 21st, 2019 ~ In the "Prefatory Address to the King of France", in the opening of Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin outlines the Roman Catholic objections to the Reformation, and then Calvin responses to each of them. One of the Catholic criticisms is that the […]

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John Calvin On Why He Wrote The Institutes (January 23, 2013)

 John Calvin's Commentary On The Psalms Volume 1, contains a brief autobiographical account of John Calvin's embracing of the Reformation, and discusses the persecutions that caused him to write the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion 1535AD. According to the following Preface quotation, certain Anabaptists and participants […]

Related: anabaptists, Commentary on Psalms, Conversion, institutes of the christian religion, John Calvin

John T. McNeill, On John Calvin’s View of Scripture (January 18, 2013)

John Calvin Did John Calvin hold to a doctrine of the Scriptures that is rejected by the Reformed Confessions? And would Calvin's understanding of Scripture be accepted as acceptable by most Evangelical Churches in America today? It seems that according to John T. McNeill's Introduction to his edition of the "Institutes […]

Related: Biblicism, Commentary on Romans, Ford Lewis Battles, holy scriptures, Inerrancy, Inerrancy of Scripture, Inspiration, institutes of the christian religion, John Calvin, John T. McNeill, Plenary Verbal Inspiration, Sola Scriptura, Verbal Inerrancy

Third Use of the Law (Tertius Usus Legis) (November 7, 2012)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer At the end of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics, there is an analysis of the Lutheran symbolic literature (ie. the Book of Concord: the Augsburg Confession, Luther's Catechisms, etc.) Bonhoeffer, therein, discussed the Lutheran understand of the Law and asks whether there is one primary use of the Law (primus usus legis) or three? I'll summarize Bonhoeffer's three […]

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