All Articles For Kuiper, Douglas J

A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Studies: Understanding Key Debates, by Nijay K. Gupta. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020. Pp. 196. $24.99 (softcover). ISBN: 978-0810097575. [Reviewed by Douglas J. Kuiper] Nijay Gupta, professor of New Testament at Portland Seminary, presents a beginner’s guide to New Testament studies. Emphatically, this is a beginner’s guide: “This textbook aims to aid the uninitiated in understanding, in a simple way, some of the most important and hotly debated issues in academic study of the New Testament” (xi). And: “It is written for relative newcomers to the world of New Testament studies, not experts”...

Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet, by Bruce Gordon. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021. Pp xvii + 349. $32.50 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0300235975. [Reviewed by Douglas J. Kuiper] Biographies of Martin Luther and John Calvin abound. Of the reformer Huldrych (Ulrich) Zwingli (1484-1531) they do not. Another English biography of Zwingli is always welcome. Besides, Zwingli’s significance cannot be overstated. Although he began to understand the true gospel about the same time as Luther, Zwingli did so com­pletely independent of Luther. And in some respects he went further than Luther: “Nothing in Luther’s reforms matched the zeal with which the worship...

Previous article in this series: February 1, 2021, p. 205. In our last article we noted that the elders must oversee the election and installation of officebearers, and the work of officebearers. Doing that, they oversee the various offices in the church. Now we see that their oversight is even more specific: it extends to the doctrine and life of every officebearer personally.   Overseeing their doctrine and life The elders are to oversee both the doctrine and the life of the church’s officebearers—that is, they oversee each officebearer personally. The Form of Ordination of Elders and Deacons requires this...

The First Ecumenical Council (Nicea, AD 325) established the doctrine that Jesus Christ is truly God, being of the same essence as the Father. The Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, AD 381) reiterated the deity of Christ, began to work through the relationship between Christ’s person and natures, and set forth clearly the deity of the Holy Spirit. In the fifty years before the next ecumenical council met, theologians continued to investigate the relation between Christ’s divine person and His two natures. What particularly made necessary the meeting of the Council of Ephesus in AD 431 was the error of Nestorianism....

What is the nature of true preaching? For now, the question is not, What is the content of true preaching? The content of true preaching is the gospel. That man has not truly preached who has not set forth the gospel. The following article will develop that point more fully. The question now is, What is the nature of the preaching of the gospel? The question is relevant. For one thing, every week God’s people sit under the preaching of the gospel. What is it under which we sit? And why do we do sit under it? Second, the question...

In October 2021 the faculty of the Protestant Reformed Theological Seminary presented a conference on the doctrine of preaching. That the conference treated the doctrine of preaching means that it did not touch on matters of style and delivery, but rather on the nature and content of the preaching, as set forth in Scripture and the Reformed confessions. The four main articles in this issue of the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal contain the written version of those speeches. The first article underscores that the preaching of the gospel, by one who is properly called to that work, is the voice...

Previous article in this series: March 1, 2021, p. 250. The Second Ecumenical Council settled the controversy regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. It also made decisions regarding church government. Two such decisions we noted in our last article: it required bishops to labor within their own geographic jurisdictions; and it stated that the Bishop of Constantinople receives honor after the Bishop of Rome. We conclude our treatment of this Council by noting some of its other decisions, or “canons.”   Maximus never was a bishop A certain Maximus considered himself to be a bishop, and ordained other men to...

Previous article in this series: January 15, 2021, p. 130. The main doctrinal issue that the Council of Constantinople addressed was that of the Trinity, including the question as to how Christ is truly God and man, and whether the Holy Spirit is truly God. In our last article we noted the decisions of the Council regarding this issue, and the creed that the Council produced. Most ecclesiastical assemblies that treat doctrinal issues also deal with other matters that pertain to the welfare of the churches. The Second Ecumenical Council was no exception. In this article we note two other...

That the elders are called to oversee the worship services of the church we have noted. We turn now to another aspect of their work of oversight, namely, to oversee the ecclesiastical offices.   Election to office The elders’ oversight of the offices includes the choice of who may be in office and the work of putting them into office. Our Church Order (CO) makes this clear in several places. Referring to the calling of a minister who has not yet been in office, Article 4 requires the minister to be elected (chosen) “by the consistory and the deacons.” Article...

Previous article in this series: December 1, 2020, p. 112. We have now explained why the second ecumenical council in Constantinople (381) was necessary. Although the first ecumenical council in Nicea (325) had condemned Arianism (which denied that Christ is God), that heresy continued to hold influence and semi-Arianism (which said that Christ is similar to God, although not God) had developed. Some who opposed Arianism developed other wrong views of Christ. In addition, the question arose how the Holy Spirit related to the Father and Son. To address these matters, Emperor Theodosius I called the Council of Constantinople.  ...