How do you lead a church class through a fourth-century spiritual autobiography? Terry Schlossberg describes a 19-week Sunday seminar on Augustine’s Confessions at The National Presbyterian Church and prints the questions she used for each session.
Why read J. Gresham Machen today, long after the fundamentalist controversy? Darryl G. Hart traces his life and argues that Machen’s view of the church as a doctrinal, voluntary and otherworldly body speaks to Presbyterians living in a post-Christian culture.
What can sixteenth-century believers teach us about living under the Bible’s authority? Ann White follows Luther, Calvin and women such as Argula von Grumbach and Katherina Schutz Zell to show what faith, obedience and study looked like in the first Reforming generations.
How can Calvin speak of human dignity and of total depravity in the same breath? Michael Horton traces the paradox of a glorious creation and a willful fall through the Institutes, and asks why the modern church has lost both halves.
What did Calvin teach about baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and what does he still offer Presbyterians? Viola Larson works through Book Four of the Institutes, showing sacraments that seal God’s promise in Christ and depend on the Word and the Spirit.
What did it cost the church fathers to hold the line on the Trinity? Gerald McDermott recalls how Basil and the two Gregories were dragged reluctantly into the fourth-century conflict, suffered for it, and prevailed, and draws six lessons for a church in conflict today.
Did the Auburn Affirmation of 1924 offer a middle way for the church? Paul Leggett traces its history and argues that its view of Scripture, its attack on Assembly authority and its talk of “theories” left doctrine without any meaningful definition.
What does a pastor and thinker born 300 years ago have to say to the church now? Stephen Crocco sketches the life of Jonathan Edwards from East Windsor to Princeton and traces how his reputation fell and then rose again.
How should pastors pray for renewal, and how will they know it when it comes? Charles Hambrick-Stowe draws five lessons from Jonathan Edwards for church leaders today: persistence, humility, piety, theology and holiness.
What if beauty is a person before it is a quality? Louis Mitchell follows Jonathan Edwards from the harmony of a symphony to the life of the Trinity, and shows why for Edwards a saving experience of God is an experience of beauty.
Did reason alone, as the deists claimed, show humanity the truth about God? Gerald McDermott follows Jonathan Edwards’s argument that fallen reason fails without revelation, and explains why he defended the Bible against the deists.
Was Jonathan Edwards an opponent of the Enlightenment or a child of it? Mark Valeri reviews recent books on Edwards, from Marsden and Zakai to Pauw and Holmes, and asks what he can still teach about faith and modernity.