John Williamson Nevin (1803-1886)

If you're ever near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, it's worth taking a few minutes to drive through the charming little village of Mercersburg. The area is best known for its associations with James Buchanan who was born nearby, but for the German Reformed, it was a center of both secular and spiritual education in the 19th century.

A PCA Take on Paedocommunion

https://gospelreformation.net/dear-pastor-may-my-child-take-the-lords-supper/

Spinnenweber is to be commended as he covers all the bases and his treatment of the subject is fair. Unfortunately his conclusions are completely wrong.

Fundamentalism's Baconian Epistemology

I encountered this on a website - an argument against transubstantiation by means of empirical deduction. It reminded me of what some have called the Baconian epistemology of Fundamentalism which is closely related to the Common Sense Realism so dominant in the early days of America. The pastor in question appeals to a perceived problem with the bread....

Spiritual Symbolism is Still Symbolism

https://www.crossway.org/articles/is-the-lords-supper-jesuss-actual-body-and-blood-1-corinthians/

On one level this article had moments in which it was a blessing to read. And yet another part of me wanted to crumple up the paper and throw it across the room.

We can agree that the Lord's Supper is not a repeated sacrifice as understood in the Roman Catholic Mass and while some of the Lutheran hair-splitting and insistence on ubiquity is not always helpful, Naselli's rendering of the Supper as merely symbolic does not account for the Scriptural data.

How Should Christians View Their Children?

https://jacobrcrouch.wordpress.com/2024/11/01/train-your-kids-to-be-christians/

There is much that is positive in this article and I do not doubt Crouch's sincerity nor do I wish to simply cast his comments in a negative light. Rather I wish to utilize them and discuss some of the tensions and inconsistencies that exist within the Reformed and Evangelical communities.

New Calvinism, Reformed Sacramentology, and the New Testament

https://www.str.org/w/will-god-be-in-pain-for-eternity-as-he-watches-people-suffer-in-hell-

I will desist from an extended critique of Greg Koukl and the advice he dispenses on his programme. There are quite a few things that could be said about the other segments of this episode that I found problematic. In fact, I rarely find myself ever agreeing with him about much of anything. But one particular aspect of this show struck me.

Inbox: Can an Unbaptized person take Communion?

It seems like this subject is coming up a lot lately as I've encountered it in churches, in conversation, and even in podcast discussions. Sadly, the understanding of this question is often lacking.

Inbox: Questions Concerning the Apocrypha (IV)

One could say (given all that has been argued here) that I might be a prime candidate for swimming the Tiber (or Crossing the Bosphorus) and I have been forced to acknowledge the weight of such arguments and to a degree I can understand why many have abandoned the Reformation (and especially Evangelicalism) for Rome or Constantinople. But this is folly of an even greater magnitude as Rome and Constantinople are false systems – false and counterfeit manifestations of Christianity. This doesn't mean that every last thing Rome holds to or proclaims is wrong – as even the heirs of the sixteenth century Reformation will acknowledge, though there is little agreement as to what that all means. Those who defect to Rome have already embraced erroneous assumptions and then when the weight of everything is else is factored in – they make the perilous move and thinking they do Christ service, they join with His enemies. Unlike most contemporary Evangelicals, I still argue that Roman Catholicism is antichrist and at least a manifestation or a component of the Whore-Beast imagery of New Testament prophecy.

Ignatius on Worship as Spiritual Warfare

Recently re-reading some Early Church Fathers, I was both pleased and inspired to discover this exhortation on the part of Ignatius of Antioch who was martyred in the early second century. Quoting from the longer extant version of his epistle to the Ephesians, we read in Chapter XIII:

 Take heed, then, often to come together to give thanks to God, and show forth His praise. For when ye come frequently together in the same place, the powers of Satan are destroyed, and his "fiery darts" urging to sin fall back ineffectual. For your concord and harmonious faith prove his destruction, and the torment of his assistants. Nothing is better than that peace which is according to Christ, by which all war, both of aerial and terrestrial spirits, is brought to an end. "For we wrestle not against blood and flesh, but against principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places."