Contending for Our All

Defending Truth and Treasuring Christ in the Lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen by John Piper.

This is another in John Piper’s The Swans Are Not Silent book series. Like the others, it consists of biographical sketches of three historical christian leaders and discussion of lessons the reader can learn from lives of each one. The men whose life stories are featured in this volume are Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen, who each defended truth in the Christian controversies of their day.

The introduction of Contending for Our All is a defense of those who fight for “the truth and meaning of the gospel” when the truth of the gospel is at stake. The reason this defense must be made is that

[i]n every age there is a kind of person who tries to minimize the importance of truth-defining and truth-defending controversy by saying that prayer, worship, evangelism, missions, and dependence on the Holy Spirit are more important….

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Update on Saturday, September 13, 2008 at 2:00PM by rebecca

In the comments Kim says she likes seeing all the reviews with “the handy dandy link to purchase them.” If you’re Canadian like Kim, you might prefer using this link to all my reviews at Amazon.ca.

Book Review: Reformed Confessions Harmonized

With an Annotated Bibliography of Reformed Doctrinal Works, edited by Joel R. Beeke and Sinclair B. Ferguson.

I often use this handy-dandy reference work when putting the Theological Term of the Week posts together, and I know there are some of you reading here who would find this as fun and useful as I do. Included are seven historic reformed confessions—the Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and the Canons of Dort (1618-19), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646-47) and the Larger and Shorter Westminster Catechisms (1647)—side by side in seven column format, arranged by subject matter. So when I want a historic quote on a particular theological term, I just find the topic in this book and pick a confession to quote.

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