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Thomas Helwys’s (1550-1616) “A Declaration of Faith” is the earliest English Baptist confession. Published in Amsterdam in 1611, that claim is defensible, but reflects a complicated and controversial time in English Baptist origins. The church Helwys led parted ways with their founder, John Smyth, over doctrinal conflict and also faced scrutiny from other congregations as … Read more
Throughout 1 Cor 11:2–16, Paul makes a complex argument for why women should wear head coverings while praying and prophesying in the assembly of believers, building his case from theological order (verse 3), from the Genesis creation accounts (verses 7–12), from conventions of honor and shame (verses 4–6, 13–15), from the practice in other churches … Read more
Despite its centrality to Christian theology, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed’s implicit doctrine of revelation remains under-explored. This may seem unsurprising since the doctrine was largely assumed in the debates of the time and not a focus of the Creed. This does not, however, mean that doctrine is absent or irrelevant. This paper reflects on several features … Read more
Foxes “Book of Martyrs” was once one of the most widely read and broadly influential books within the English Reformation tradition. Starting as one of the great chained books, given a privileged place in every parish church alongside the English Bible and Book of Common Prayer during the English Reformation, it exerted an incredible influence … Read more
This paper explores William Perkins’s use of covenantal thought as a key tool for interpreting eschatology, focusing on how his understanding of divine covenants shapes his view of the end times. Perkins, a prominent figure in Reformed theology, employs a covenantal framework to unify Scripture, presenting the unfolding of God’s redemptive plan from creation to … Read more
There has been a good deal of helpful conversation over the past decade about the relationship between spiritual formation/sanctification and the nature or psychology of virtue development in Aristotle, Aquinas, and Positive Psychology. This has been a very needed conversation, for it has helped provide an anthropological/psychological model for a developed and rigorous approach to … Read more
This paper will explore the morality of IVF and Surrogacy by considering the motivation driving such practices. Often, the ethical assessment of IVF and Surrogacy focus on various associated issues such as commodifying the body, playing God, or dealing with the creation of and potential destruction of human embryos. While these are necessary and valid … Read more
What is the unity of the Spirit and how does this unity apply to the early Church in Ephesus? While contemporary research often applies the “unity of the Spirit” that Paul mentions in Ephesians 4:3 to a modern Christian community, there appears to be a research gap in connecting the original socio-political context of Ephesus … Read more
The turn of the twentieth century presented profound challenges to the national identity of African Americans and their place in the United States. The growth of the legal doctrine of racial segregation known as Jim Crow, the specter of racialized mob violence and lynching, and the restriction of economic opportunities, especially in the South, dominated … Read more
Augustinian scholars like William Harmless and Michael Glowaski successfully situate Augustine’s approach to spiritual formation by evaluating his preaching to catechumens. We can go further, though, in assessing Augustine’s aims and practices for spiritual formation by understanding how the creed provides not only “the basic guardrails within which we theologize (Stephen Wellum, God the Son … Read more