Month: July 2009

Today (July 30) is the day William Jones was born in the year 1726. He lived until 1800, and is remembered as “Jones of Nayland,” for the last post he held, as perpetual curate of Nayland from 1777 (and because the name Jones doesn’t exactly make you easy to find in English history books). Jones…

J. Gresham Machen was born this day (July 28) in 1881, and died in 1937. An adherent of the Old Princeton theology and protege of B. B. Warfield, Machen launched a classic attack on modernist theology in 1923 with his book, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: Macmillan, 1923). As modernism made deeper inroads into the…

This is an excerpt from a longer article on Barth in A Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, ed. Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten (Oxford University Press, 2013). Benjamin Warfield once wrote that ‘the the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church.’…

Today (July 26) in 1933, Charles Albert Tindley died at the age of 77. Born just one half-step out of slavery in 1856, Tindley rose to the rank of pastoring a 3,000 member Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Tindley has been called “the prince of preachers” (apologies to Charles Spurgeon), but I haven’t been able…

William Burkitt was born this day (July 25) in 1650. Burkitt was a graduate of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and an Anglican minister. He was the author of the celebrated Expository Notes on the New Testament, published in two volumes about 1700. Later luminaries such as Matthew Henry and Charles Spurgeon recommended this work highly. Burkitt…

Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) is remembered for one devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest, which was published, like all but one of his 30 books, posthumously by his widow Biddie. Biddie was a stenographer who captured Oswald’s spoken ministry and, after his death, turned her notes into volumes of publishable writing. In 1935 she published…

It was on July 22, 1668, that Madame Guyon (Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, 1648-1717) had the most important spiritual experience in a life that was all about spiritual experiences. She was blown away, lost in God, plunged into the depths of the divine love. At least that’s how she talked about this…

Q: How do you explain I Tim 2:12: But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence?” Should women in church teach? A: The Revised Version gives the meaning more plainly: “But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over…

Today (July 21) is the day that Col. Robert G. Ingersoll died in 1899. Ingersoll was the most popular promoter of agnosticism in the late nineteenth century, though his favored way of characterizing his beliefs was “Free Thought.” He not only drew large crowds when he came to town, but he also commanded large sums…