As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
It was a warm, sunny autumn Wednesday afternoon when our bus rolled into Worms, Germany—the second-to-last stop on the final day of touring on our 500th anniversary Reformation trip.
The town was decorated almost as if Luther himself were returning.
At the side of the road, we saw signs that read “Solus Christus,” “Sola Gratia,” “Sola Fide” and “Sola Scriptura”—like the placards that city residents might post to salute a winning sports team.
“Tertullian, Roger Williams, and John MacArthur debate the perils of freedom.” - C.Today
“The apologists affirmed: Christians are model citizens, respectful to Roman authorities, do good, and are not a threat to the empire.
“Hodge also saw that science low on the ladder of abstraction, based on observing and measuring, is not in conflict with Christian belief—but “science” high on the ladder, with faith in things unseen like macro-evolution, is. Here’s my pretend 1874 interview with Hodge about Darwin. Hodge’s own words form the answers.” - Olasky
“Now Thank We All Our God… rose to popularity at a strange time in European history, when it seemed there was little for which to be grateful. As the Thirty Years’ War raged through the interior of the continent, plague spread rapidly through communities in ways that now feel eerily familiar.” - TGC
Since the days of the Reformation, Protestant churches have traditionally situated the pulpit front and center in the architecture of their meeting places. The purpose of the pulpit’s conspicuously elevated and prominent position is to symbolize the authority and centrality of God’s Word in the life and ministry of the gathered church. The question we want to raise in this brief article is whether such symbolism is always necessary or helpful in our day.
Review of An Introduction to John Owen: A Christian Vision for Every Stage of Life by Crawford Gribben, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020, 190 pages, pbk.
Crawford Gribben is a professor at Queen’s University in Belfast and is well known as a scholar of Puritanism, specializing on eschatology. He has written a previous book on John Owen which has garnered him much praise.
“the conception of the Church of England as a half-way house between Rome and John Calvin’s Geneva (or Martin Luther’s Wittenberg) would have been incomprehensible to the English Reformers of the sixteenth century.” - Ref21
Discussion