Jared's Web

Can anyone help me? I’m puzzling over the alleged words of the Scottish reformer, George Wishart. ‘…a priest standing at the altar saying Mass, was like a fox wagging his tail in July.’ I don’t have a clue what foxes do in July. I gather that foxes wag their tails when they’re happy, but from [...]

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Peter Bulkeley understands the true nature of the covenant with Moses. It is not a covenant of works, but a covenant of grace. In his 1646, The Gospel Covenant, he writes thus: I grant the Covenant of works was then revealed and made knowne to the children of Israel, as being before almost obliterated and [...]

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Olevian and Rollock do some good things with Covenant Theology. They also do some bad.   Olevian, in his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, says, ‘The law is a doctrine that God has implanted in human nature and has repeated and renewed in His commandments. … He also promises eternal life on the condition that [...]

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There is some debate about the whether the Mosaic covenant was a covenant of works or grace.   I like the way Ursinus put it, when the covenant of works was first coming into its own. In question 10 of his Larger Catechism, he speaks of the ‘divine law’, which he, with Calvin, believed was [...]

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Did Calvin believe that the Old Covenant was a covenant of works (promising eternal life as a reward for perfect human obedience) or a covenant of grace (giving life based on grace, not on human merit)? In his Institutes, he speaks of an absolute dichotomy between the OT and NT. The OT is a ‘legal [...]

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The wonderful Epistle of Barnabas from around 100 A.D. says that there are seven days of world history. One day is as a thousand years with the Lord. So there are 6000 years until the return of Christ. In Bishop Ussher’s chronology, the world commenced on the evening of September 20, 4004 B.C. Barnabas’s six [...]

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There is a debate about when Whitefield became a real Calvinist. The below is to be published in Churchman in early 2011, and is another chunk of my ThM on Whitefield. The title I’ve given it is thus: ‘I never read Calvin’: George Whitefield, a Calvinist Untimely Born. whitefield-the-calvinist-jch.doc

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In the original five points of Calvinism from 1536 (see another post yet to made to this blog-website), prayer was one of the five points. You can’t be a Calvinist without prayer! Here is an article published in Australian Presbyterian in December 2009. The theme for that edition of AP was the Lord’s Prayer. My article is [...]

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Augustus Toplady called George Whitefield ‘a most excellent systematic divine’. The only problem with that is that Toplady is almost alone in thinking it. As part of my ThM at Westminster Seminary, I looked at the covenant theology of Whitefield. Compared to what everyone says about him, it is remarkable just how ordered his theology [...]

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The February 2009 edition of ‘Australian Presbyterian’ is on the topic of ‘Scripture, our sure foundation’, with articles by Noel Weeks and Douglas Milne. I’ve got an article in it, which I originally titled, ‘Why I still believe in inerrancy’. AP has it as ‘Every syllable: Andrew McGowan’s controversial book undermines inerrancy.’ why-i-still-believe-in-inerrancy.doc ap2009.pdf

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