Here’s a handy tip for you: Machen’s middle name (his mother’s maiden name) is pronounced like “Gressam.”  Not many people actually pronounce the name correctly, even at Westminster Theological Seminary.

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The most recent episode of Christ the Center has been published over at Castle Church. The episode is a brief introduction to the theology of Karl Barth. Previous episodes have covered several interesting topics. Biblical Theology and the Westminster Standards The Spirituality of the Church Choosing a Commentary Building a Theological Library Part 1, Part 2 The New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament

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As presuppositionalists, we should constantly seek to expose autonomous reasoning and argumentation. I recently listened to an interesting unveiling of autonomous thought on a Mars Hill audio journal. The speaker was talking about the various pro-life arguments and demonstrated how pro-life apologists typically appeal to autonomy. Often, the pro-life argument is presented as such: We need to stand up for the unborn child because they don’t have a voice of their own. We must protect them because no one asked them about taking their life. This reasoning fails within a proper Christi... [read more]

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The latest episode of Christ the Center is available.  The panel members give a brief introduction to the major issues and point listeners to a number of helpful publications on the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament.

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The precise meaning of words is and has been extremely important in the life of the church. Throughout church history, orthodoxy has hinged on small changes in meaning from one term to the next. Perhaps one of the most significant examples of this phenomena was the development and usage of the terms used of the Trinity in the 4th century. The immediate context for the development of Trinitarian language began with Arius. Arius was a priest in Alexandria who taught that Jesus was not eternal and that there was a time in which he did not exist. According to Arius, Jesus created all things... [read more]

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In his unpublished Reformed Textual Criticism,1 Moises Silva brings up an interesting point regarding the Van Tilian aversion to probabilistic methods and the discipline of textual criticism. One need not spend much time in order to uncover Van Til’s negativity toward probabilistic methods. He found no room for probability within the Christian epistemology. This leads the textual critic who has Van Tilian sympathies to question whether he needs to jettison one of his interests. The whole enterprise of textual criticism is based on mechanical methods designed to point out which text... [read more]

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Boethius was an interesting and important character of the ancient church, but surprisingly does not receive as much attention as other figures. Boethius, a Roman noble in the 6th century, wrote an extremely influential treatise on an Augustinian formulation1 of the Trinity which became the academic standard for the church of his day. Apparently, for anyone to be approved to a teaching post, they had to submit a commentary on Boethius’ treatise. Carl Trueman suggests2 Boethius “falls between two stools” since he lived between the traditional division of the ancient and... [read more]

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Further, the notion of the law as specially imposed by God with a view to reward also points to the absurdity of seeing Christ as under law for his own sake: again, the hypostatic union itself was quite sufficient to make Christ’s human nature worthy of eternal life for itself. Here we see the obvious doctrinal intersection of the covenant of works and that of redemption in the context of Christology and mediation […] [A]s a representative human being, Christ must both fulfill the law positively on behalf of humanity because of Adam’s abject failure so to do, and he must... [read more]

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From Goodbye Blog by Alan Jacobs: [T]he blogosphere inevitably accelerates the pace of debate to the timetable of daily journalism. In terms of how they treat substantive ideas, blogs are not very different from newspapers: they present an idea and then move on, as quickly as possible, to the next idea. Perhaps there can be, later on, some brief acknowledgment that that idea wasn’t treated fully and adequately—but, as the newsreel in Citizen Kane reminds us, Time is On The March, and bloggers are under enormous pressure to march along with it. […] Blogs remain great for news:... [read more]

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Charles Bridges in The Christian Ministry writes: Nor let it be thought, that studious habits must necessarily infringe upon our more active employments. What shall we say to the nine pondrous folios of Augustine, and the thirteen of Chrysostom - volumes not written, like Jerome’s, in monastic retirement, but in the midst of almost daily preaching engagements, and conflicting, anxious, and most responsible duties - volumes - not of light reading, the rapid flow of shallow declamation - but the results of deep and well-digested thinking? The folios also of Calvin - the most diligent ... [read more]

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