Dr Paul Allen

Engraved from the original oil painting in the University Library of Geneva, this is considered Calvin's best likeness. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) John Calvin uses a surprising term to describe our neglect of the doctrine of God ’s providence in the course of our everyday lives. He calls it superstition. Superstitious people wrongly attribute supernatural power to things that do not actually possess that power: a black cat, a broken mirror, a ladder overhead, salt thrown over your shoulder, the chalk of the third base line. But what does superstition have to do with providence? The classical Reformed view of providence teaches that God is in ultimate control of everything in the universe, including the free choices and actions (good and bad) of all people. If this understanding is correct, it is superstitious to think and feel and act as though other human beings possess  ultimate  causality in what they do. We’re ascribing God’s role to them. But isn’t this h...

If you look in the telephone directory, you will find a huge diversity of churches. Even within individual denominations there often exists great variation. Jesus once prayed that His followers would be one ( Jn 17). But what we see today is anything but unity. What are we to make of this disunity? Does this not demonstrate that Christianity is hopelessly divided? Perhaps. Then again, there may be another way of looking at it. It is important to ask whether denominations are a good thing. Denominations generally developed out of churches seeking fellowship with one another and joint ministry. That is certainly a biblical idea (Acts 11:27–30). Often denominations began as renewal movements. So the Reformed movements of the sixteenth century arose to restore teachings about justification by faith and God’s sovereignty in salvation—teachings that had been eclipsed in the church for a long time. Later, some Presbyterians caved in to the pressures of liberalism and newer conservativ...

English: Riverside Reformed Presbyterian Church Information Board (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Daniel Doriani’s commentary on James contains an interesting quote. It is my experience that these people often typify cessationists as those who do not believe in supernatural or miraculous healings but this is really not the case. The disagreement really arises over whether or not the spiritual gift of healing is operative in the church today. This quote describes something that happened in a conservative, Reformed , Presbyterian context and something that I think is consistent with cessationist theology (even though cessationists may have some disagreement about what James refers to by anointing a person with oil). Doriani is not the only Reformed Presbyterian who has experienced this kind of blessing. During the autumn when I first studied James in earnest, a friend suffered a viral infection of the heart. While it was not a heart attack, it mimicked many of the symptoms of one. ...

English: Uniting church at Hamilton, Victoria (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Catholics   5,439,268 No religion 4,796,787 Anglican 3,679,907 Uniting Church   1,065,795 Presbyterian and Reformed  599,515 Hindu  275,535 People professing to have no religion have moved past Anglicans to become the second-largest grouping after Catholics in the 2011 Census. Almost 4.8 million people said they had no religion, up 29 per cent from 2006, but the number of people not answering the question dropped by 2 per cent. This suggested that more people were claiming a religious identity (including no religion), said Monash University sociology professor Gary Bouma. Advertisement: Story continues below The total Christian population is 13.2 million, or 61 per cent, down three percentage points. Catholics have dropped half a percentage point to 25.3 or 5.4 million, Anglicans are down 1.6 percentage points to 3.7 million, while the Uniting Church is down to 5 per cen...