Crumbs from the Master's Table

"What is called 'American civil religion' is the product of a failure of ecclesiology." —Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom ...

Wilson: During our Sabbath dinner liturgy, the grandkids are asked a bunch of questions, and among the questions I ask are these—"Do ...

What is sentimentality ? My wife and I dislike it intensely, think it's all too common where it should be less common, and wish we could...

"There is absolutely nothing that God can give us that we are incapable of turning into an idol." —Douglas Wilson, Against the C...

In his stimulating book, The Bible and the Future , Anthony Hoekema, apparently following Karl Ludwig Schmidt ( TDNT 1:589), refers his re...

"The kind of biblicism that learns nothing from the great councils is in danger of becoming cultic." —D. A. Carson, Jesus the So...

How can one be sad and glad at the same time? Is that even possible? Isn't that a contradiction? No. No, it's not. Grace gets you th...

Luther two days before he died: Nobody can understand Virgil in his Bucolics , unless he has been a shepherd for five years. Nobody can un...

There are some today who desire to purge the church of any notion of a covenant of grace (for a traditional description of this covenant, se...

Many scholars, as many of you are no doubt familiar, have proposed a "center" to the whole Bible. There is nothing like consensus ...

Owen: Let us not mistake ourselves. To be spiritually minded is, not to have the notion and knowledge of spiritual things in our minds; it...

Rosner: What constitutes a god? Martin Luther's answer, as he reflected on the first commandment in his larger catechism, was "wh...

Carson: The kind of biblical theology that is profoundly grounded in tracing out the Bible's plot-line is intrinsically more likely to...

Luther: I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people gay; they fo...

D. A. Carson: THE STORY IS TOLD of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of the most influential preachers of the twentieth century. When he was dyin...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the editors of the Times of London asked several eminent writers to contribute pieces under ...

"What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble ...

Commenting on "she took . . . and ate" in Gen. 3:6, Derek Kidner says: "So simple the act, so hard its undoing. God will tast...

"The world we live in today puts more value on sea turtle eggs than on the human embryo" (R. C. Sproul, Everyone's a Theologia...

John Owen: It is a vain thing for any to suppose that they place their chiefest happiness in being for ever in the presence of Christ, who...

Christopher Wright comments on Gen. 3:22: God accepts that humans have indeed breached the Creator-creature distinction. No that humans ha...

Iain Provan: The fundamental idolatry described by the Bible lies also at the heart of the varied modern idolatries: the idolatry of the s...

In his influential popular-level book According to Plan , Graeme Goldsworthy comments on an unhappy development in Old Testament Studies: ...

In his course notes for a lecture on systematic theology that J. I. Packer gave in 2009 at Regent College, he says that "theology as an...

"[T]he central theme of Scripture is the kingdom of God defined simply as God's people in God's place under God's rule....

"Even a cursory survey indicates that each of the Gospels is firmly yet distinctively embedded in Israel's story through its respec...

"The only man who should be counted a real theologian is he who can build up men's consciences in the fear of God." —John Ca...

I cite Goldsworthy's judgment here with the utmost and highest esteem and approval: For a theologian to pursue a biblical theology imp...

In his justly praised and highly regarded  Biblical Theology : Old and New Testaments , Geerhardus Vos tells us what biblical theology is: ...

Whether Calvin believed in what came to be called in later Protestant theology "limited atonement" or "particular/definite re...

N. T. Wright writes:  In these ‘pastoral’ letters Paul regularly refers to Jesus with a title the Roman world used for Caesar: ‘saviour’. ...

Owen: It belongs unto the true notion of heaven, that it is a state wherein we shall be eternally freed from sin and all the concernments ...

Calvin: St. Paul tells us [2 Tim. 3:12] that anyone desiring to live a holy life in Jesus Christ must expect persecution. God, it is true,...

Calvin: Let us fight for the cause of righteousness, that is to say, for what is just. It is not enough to make an indiscriminate peace. T...

Calvin commenting on what it means to be a "peacemaker" in Matt. 5:9: Meekness is part of being peaceable. If we are patient, it...

J. Gordon McConville: The story of the prophetic books involves re-thinking who 'Israel' is. The prophets sometimes speak of a ...

Calvin: Helping others amounts to nothing unless we are moved by a love which comes from the heart, and which bids us bear our share of th...

Calvin: What is pity? Briefly put, it is nothing else but the pain we feel at someone else's sorrow. A man may be healthy and content,...

The prophetic literature packs quite the potent punch. It is heavy hitting, sparing none, not least the leadership of the ancient or modern ...

I have not read much written by George Marsden. But what I have read seems to indicate, to me at least, that he tends to be understated and ...

Commenting on Isa. 57:20 in a sermon on Mt. 5:5-7 and Lk. 6:20-21, Calvin remarks: Only those blinded by vanity, lies, and prejudice will ...

Edwards: Two things that are exceeding needful in ministers, as they would do any great matters to advance the kindgom of Christ, are zeal...

Warfield: If, then, we are to affirm that Christianity consists of facts, wholly separated from those ideas by which these facts obtain th...

Edwards: Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by his r...

N. T. Wright on 1 Tim. 1:15-16: God has taken the wildest, most violent of blaspheming persecutors, and has transformed him into not only ...

Commenting on how the man Christ Jesus spent the entire night in prayer before calling his twelve disciples as apostles (Lk. 6:12-13), Calvi...

Preaching in the early 1560s on the call of the twelve apostles in Mk. 3:13-19 and Lk. 6:12-19, Calvin speaks powerfully of God's gracio...

Packer on the "sassiness" of theology: "I define the sassiness of theology as an unwillingness to keep quiet when God is mi...

"Let us not be ashamed to submit our understanding to God's boundless wisdom so far as to yield before its many secrets. For, of th...

Edwards: I think there is a great deal of reason from the Scripture, to conclude that no sort of men in the world will be so low in hell, ...

John Frame defines theology as "the application of Scripture, by persons, to every area of life." This definition includes the thr...

John Frame on theologizing: Academic and technical theology should not be valued over other kinds. The professor of theology at a universi...

We just got confirmation from Emily's OB/GYN about what we really already knew a few days ago: we have lost another baby (for now, anywa...

Acts 9:31 states one of a handful of summary statements that Luke provides periodically throughout the book of Acts. And I just wish to poin...

J. I. Packer: "The conclusions supposed to have been established by last-century biblical criticism were really the presuppositions o...

What are the means of grace? One could answer this question in different ways. One way to look at it is to see the means of grace as the set...

A good word from  Doug Wilson on reading N. T. Wright: Because of the way Wright articulates certain biblical truths — truths that some o...

The phrase "kingdom of God" or "kingdom of heaven" is a difficult one to define. This is because the Bible never quite p...

Edwards: Now God's internal glory, is either in his understanding or will. The glory or fullness of his understanding is his knowle...

So often so many, in my view, interpret wrongly the phrase “the torah of YHWH” ( תוֹרַ֥ת יְהוָ֗ה ) in Psalm 1. It is often taken simply to...

David Wells: This, in fact, is one of the great tragedies of our time, that evangelicals have lost their spiritual status as outsiders to ...

Chapter 7 of Andrew Murray's spiritual classic  With Christ in the School of Prayer  is delicious and delightful to the soul that longs ...

David Wells: The language of the self is not interchangeable with human nature. They are two entirely different things. The self is the wa...

David Wells: The majesty of God's forgiveness is lost entirely when we lose what has to be forgiven. What has to be forgiven is not ju...

Jonathan Edwards: All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God's works, is included in that one phrase, t he ...

C. S. Lewis: An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theore...

Owen: When our Saviour requires that we should part with all for his sake and the gospel, he promiseth a hundredfold in lieu of them, even...

C. S. Lewis: "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitor...

Owen on our heavenly and holy hope: Hope in general is but an uncertain expectation of a future good which we desire; but as it is a gospe...

A good friend and I have been noting for years the centrality of the resurrection in apostolic preaching (particularly in Acts). And yet Eva...

Commenting on 2 Cor. 4:16-18, John Owen instructs the twenty-first century and our worldliness: Not to faint under the daily decays of our...

Owen on how to stand against temptations: There are three things required unto this duty, and spiritual wisdom unto them all. First, know ...

Owen: It is our duty greatly to mind the things that are above, eternal things, both as unto their reality, their present state, and our f...

God is a God of blessing. He delights to bless. He has undertaken—at the price of his Son's life—the greatest undertaking of the cosmos:...

David Wells: In the older world we left behind, people thought of adversity as inevitable. Adversity was a consequence of the fall for tho...

Speaking of the transition to the new therapeutic world we inhabit, David Wells comments: The downside to this self-worked therapy, of cou...

I just came across this sentence again, though not while reading Pilgrim's Progress this time, but in a book on writing sentences, and ...

What follows comes from a paper I produced for Professor G. K. Beale in 2010 for his New Testament Theology class (one of the best classes ...

Commenting on Mic. 6:9, Owen pleads: There is a call, a cry in every rod of God, in every chastening providence , and therein [he] makes a...

In Rom. 9:11, "works" are clearly construed as the doing of either "good or bad." That's important, not least in the...

David Wells: America has more lawyers than the rest of the world combined. In his famous Harvard address, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn observed...

Here's a good word from Peter Leithart's  blog  over at First Things:  One of my complaints against contemporary Protestantism is ...

For those who watched the live steam of The Future of Protestantism  (which was edifying, but not nearly as insightful as I had hoped), and...