Top Posts from 2020
This is a list of my top (i.e. favorite) posts from the past year. This list is most helpful for me to look back later to see what captured my attention during 2020. This past year also represented a shift in my writing, namely that I had a number of articles published elsewhere. I include links to all of those as well.
Posts
- A Personal Journey on Intinction. In this post I reflect on the issues involved in the practice of intinction through the lens of my personal experience.
- I summarized what I believe are the distinctive characteristics of Reformed faith and practice here.
- I wrote several articles on human sexuality (two of which are included on the article section below), with two additional posts on the subject, including an assessment of transgender pronouns and Christian speech and a review of the Christian Reformed Church’s report on human sexuality.
- A subject to which I regularly return is the EPC’s version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This year I wrote on why the additions of chapters 34 and 35 should be rejected.
- I was frustrated by the lack of good American Presbyterian family trees, so I made my own. I’m not a graphic designer, so it will need to be polished in the future, but I like it.
Articles
- Mere Orthodoxy
- Our Fathers Left Us Evangelicalism, which is quite possibly my favorite piece I have ever written.
- All Monuments Must Fall
- World Reformed Fellowship
- The Westminster Standards and the Nashville Statement (also on my blog here)
- Westminster and Gay Christianity’s Side B (also on my blog here)
- Against the Virtual Communion of a Virtual Church (also on my blog here)
- The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals
- COVID-19 Is God’s Judgment (also on my blog here)
- Who Does Gospel Ministry?, which addresses a critical and fundamental question that is often assumed by Christians.
Top Posts from 2019
This is a list of my top (i.e. favorite) posts from the past year. This list is most helpful for me to look back later to see what captured my attention during 2019.
- What’s the purpose of benedictions? In this post I examine the biblical basis and liturgical purpose of benedictions.
- I started a four-part series on confessional renewal in my own denomination. Only the first installment was published, but I intend to post the remaining portions sometime early this year. I also added a followup to this first installment which elaborates on my philosophy of essential doctrines.
- This post is a critique of the biblical warrant for episcopal polity, and provides a presbyterian perspective. I plan to return to this subject and explain the biblical warrant for the office of ruling elder…some day.
- One of my few ventures into political commentary, in April I argued that Pete Buttigieg’s candidacy was going to expose evangelical hypocrisy and put social conservatives in a bind. I had hoped that prominent Christians would take a more explicitly pragmatic approach to politics instead of claims to moral virtue, but unfortunately developments over the last eight months have not been encouraging.
- A topic to which I often return is the subject of biblical translation and ministry. I did so again this year on the closed circle nature of biblical translation and the account of Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11. Ministers need to know Greek and Hebrew.
Top Posts of 2018
This is a list of my top (i.e. favorite) posts from the past year. This list is most helpful for me to look back later to see what captured my attention during 2018.
- Why don’t we pray for arms to regrow? This posts addresses this question and discusses the nature of prayer and God’s will.
- I wrote several posts on the question of exceptions and scruples. This is a subject I intend to address again, but my focus over the past year was on the freedom of pastors to teach on a subject where they disagree with their confession of faith. My conclusions were that if a pastor is granted an exception, he is free to teach it and the presbytery cannot prohibit that teaching. However, a pastor being granted an exception does necessarily free him in his practice, and does not grant that exception to the congregation by proxy.
- I wrote an extensive analysis of the confessionalism of the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO). ECO and the EPC are closely related, and my hope in that analysis was to provide a charitable and robust critique of ECO’s confessional approach in order to better foster a deeper partnership between our churches.
- I wrote two very different posts on sexual ethics. The first is on children in the worship of the church when the scriptural subject is sex. The second was a biblical argument for adultery disqualifying elders from serving as elders again.
A list of my top posts from 2017 can be found here.
Top Posts of 2017
Everyone seems to do these kind of lists at the end of the year, but mine will not be based on web traffic, but on my own preference. So “top” means “favorite.” This list in some ways is only meaningful…
