Compiled December 2022

Below you will find a compilation of all the articles we have published at Trinity Reformed Church. Some might wonder why we are committed to writing. The answer is this: We write because we know our people are surfing the internet looking for articles to read. And while that article over at missionalreformedjourneygospelcentered.com might say something useful, it wasn’t written for you by people that love you. We don’t write for a larger audience. Our essays are written for the congregation of Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama. We write because our love cannot be contained.

We are also committed to publishing articles that are high in quality. They must meet a certain standard of style and content before they are published. This is a safeguard against that pesky evangelical problem of lowering everything to the least common denominator. In 1961 Martyn Lloyd-Jones lamented this very problem:

Everything is being brought down to the same level; everything is being cheapened. The common man is made the standard and the authority; he decides everything, and everything has got to be brought down to him. You are getting it on your wireless, your television, in your newspapers; everywhere standards are coming down and down. Are we to do this with the Word of God? I say, No! What has always happened in the past has been this: an ignorant, illiterate people in this country and in foreign countries, coming into salvation, have been educated up to the Book and have begun to understand it, and to glory in it, and to praise God for it. I am here to say that we need to do the same at this present time.”[1]

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

With the advent of the Internet, then the smartphone, then social media, the problem of everything being lowered to the least common denominator has worsened. Our target audience is not professional Christians. But neither do we write in a way that makes immature and “worldly Christians” the standard. Could it be that appealing to the hollowness of the modern attention-deficit mind makes for even more hollowness? There has been a gradual realignment where people, even church members, take pride in their ignorance rather than their knowledge. God opposes the proud either way (1 Pt. 5:5). It’s a phenomenon of the absorption of all theological reflection into 280 characters. To meet the challenge of the rewired mind of smartphone addiction, don’t we need to boil God’s truth down to 280 characters?

The answer is, yes, at times. But neither should we refuse to read things longer than 280 characters. While it is harder and harder to generate enthusiasm for deep-delved learning in the pew today, perhaps that’s because in the minds of the watch-glancing pew sitter, to be educated up to the things of God is to become a professional Christian—a stuffy Christian-academic who parses verbs, translates Hebrew, and insufficiently loves the poor. For the record, the Christian academics I know are far from stuffy and don’t live as if translating ancient languages and loving the poor are mutually exclusive.

To seek to be educated up to the things of God is not a call for more stuffy Christian academics who cough in ink. Rather, it is to confess that the tastes and preferences of the natural man need to be put to death (Rom. 8:13), the inner self needs to be renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16), and Christians ought to grow up in every way into Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:15).

In sum, the purpose of the Trinity Reformed Church blog is to help the members “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pt. 3:18).

Apologetics

Difficult to Believe

Anxiety

Too Happy with the World

Baptism

Baptists and Baptism: What Will It Take to Achieve Catholicity?

Why Teach on Baptism?

Books and Reading

Book Recommendations (2021)

Book Recommendations (2022)

Enlarge Your Soul

Catholicity/Ecumenicity

Catholicity and What it is Not

Confessionalism

25 Theses on why we use a book of old confessions

What if Christians taught the Christian creed?

Why do we recite an ecumenical creed every Sunday?

Review of Anthony Bradley's article on critical race theory

Education

T.S. Eliot's Nehemian Vision

Defenders of Civilization

Class Catechism: English Civil War through American Civil War

Class Catechism: U.S. History 20th - 21st Century

Class Catechism: The New Testament

Class Catechism: Economics

The Lost Timeline of Learning

Engaging the Culture

The Ghosts of Modern Science: How Darwin and Huxley Redefined the World

How Should Christians Remember King George III?

Christians and History and Christian History

The Caging of God

White Man's Backlash

The Dubious Diversity Rationale

A New Vision for Virtue in Public Things

Dude Remix

Violence and the Secular Society

The Authenticity Ethos versus Biblical Christianity

God and Culture

God and Self-Realization

God and Psychotherapy

Christian Reflections for Veterans Day

All Culture Making is Local

The Forgotten Requirement of the Dominion Mandate

John Calvin and the American Republic

What to do about the secular takeover?

How Should Christians Respond to Censure?

What to do When Your Boss Encourages You to Support the Moral Revolution

Eschatology

An Eschatology of Fellowship

Apolitical Postmillennialism

This World and the Next

Evangelicalism

Subjectivism: The Tie that Binds

A Short History of Evangelical Confusion

Studies in Reversal

Straightening our Path

A Game Plan for Slumped Shouldered Christians

What is it? Explaining the Gist of Good Preaching

Too Happy with the World

Evangelicalism: A Diagnostic Exam

Thick or Thin?

Family and The Household

Questions This Dad Has for the College Recruiter Who has Come for My Child

Understanding Youthful Arrogance

Why Do Teenage Boys Start Cussing?

T.S. Eliot's 'Nehemian' Vision

The Weapon of Submission

Husbands and Headship

Grandparenting and the Transcendent Summons

The City Unveiled: Encouragements for Family Devotions

So We're The Church That Hosts English Country Dances

C.S. Lewis on the Christian Household

Reflections on the Great Commission

Sin

Pornography Canceled

The Complicated Topic of Self-Love

How to fight a spirit of self-satisfaction

Why Do Teenage Boys Start Cussing?

The Great Commission

Principles for Distancing: Or When do I Stop Ministering to that Person?

The Danger of a Half-Gospel

Reflections on the Great Commission

The Reformation

The Reformation: What is it?

The Reformation: Why was it Necessary?

The Reformation: What was it tragic?

Theology

Waiting for a King

Faith, Conversion, and the Mysteries of God

Laughter is Resurrection

Following God from a Distance

The Call to Persistence

Preparing for the World to Come

Rinse and Repeat: Encouragements to Press On

Launch Out Into the Deep

A Brief Theology of Possessions

Theocracy: The Christian Hope

What is the Relationship Between Apostasy and Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

The Forgotten Requirement of the Dominion Mandate

Six Principles of Christian Fasting

One Little Word Shall Fell Him

Worldliness

[1] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Knowing the Times (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth 1989), 112.