A review of Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church. “…there’s no consensus on how Christians ought to engage the culture….Each option has strengths, but many of them seem to draw more from contemporary cultural assumptions than from centuries of Christian experience.” - TGC
A Review of Harrison Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction, Bellingham, WA., Lexham, 2024, 520 pages, hardback.
“Many of his readers will feel stretched by the high strangeness of the stories he tells as well as the spiritual medicine he prescribes. But in my view, time has largely vindicated the central theses of his last two books, and this ought to earn him a more generous—which is not to say uncritical—reading.” - Mere Orthodoxy
“In contrast to the progressivism in ascendency for more than a decade, Buckley celebrates a liberalism of empathy, benevolence, and kindness. ‘Today we wouldn’t say we need kindness….Justice has taken its place. But if kindness made us more liberal its abandonment has made us illiberal.” - Acton
“Interlacing representative, essential, mostly brief passages from Confessions with a breezy but incisive ongoing commentary… Dr. Kreeft navigates us through the mind of a man who, in changing his own world, helped lay the foundations for our own.” - Imaginative Conservative
“Before you start complaining, be sure you’ve checked arrogance at the door. Come with your pain, not your pride.” - Ref21
There are many books on Christian worship: some helpful and some not-so-helpful. Nicolas Alford’s Doxology: How Worship Works clearly belongs in the former category. Though affirming the broader sense of worship (as a way of life), the book intentionally focuses on congregational worship. Alford is preeminently concerned that God’s people worship by the Book. Drawing from the Reformed tradition, he concisely expounds and carefully applies the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW), which, in essence, is the doctrine of sola Scriptura applied to church life and ministry.
But Alford does more—which is what makes this book superior to many others. First, he prefaces the the major principles that should govern our worship with a chapter that distinguishes between authority and influences. The Bible is the ultimate authority for worship. Nevertheless, there are other considerations that may and, in some cases, should affect the way we understand and apply the Bible. Alford defines and explains these influences in the following order of priority: Confessional/Convictional, Traditional/Cultural, and Preference/Deference.
Second, Alford identifies seven prefatory principles that we must employ as we seek to order our worship aright: the Biblical, Trinitarian, Covenantal, Ecclesiastical, Sabbatic, Governing, and Commissioned principles. These are Scriptural vantage points or perspectives from which we can ascertain the biblical contours of worship more clearly.
“In The Return of the Kingdom: A Biblical Theology of God’s Reign, Stephen G. Dempster… invites us to explore the grand narrative of God’s sovereign rule over a kingdom that has been unfolding since the beginning of time and that will continue long after the political landscapes of our age have faded.” - TGC
“Beyond its exploration of the past, Religion & Republic offers Protestants—and indeed any religious citizens—an option for civic engagement that avoids the extremes of apolitical submission and full-spectrum aggression.” - Acton
