Happy Labor Day! In celebration here are Martin Luther’s 82 volumes of Works in English, most of which are fully online, including his many commentaries on Biblical books:
Rejoice and be glad; these are days of thanksgiving!
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“Let all those that seek Thee rejoice and be glad in Thee: let such as love thy salvation say continually, ‘The Lord be magnified.'”
Ps. 40:16
We live in extraordinary times. In the benevolent provision of God we have been able to compile a collection of more than 575 bible commentaries in English from early and medieval Church figures, around 64% of which are fully available online for free:
The Early & Medieval Church Fathers on Scripture
When RBO was started about 9 years ago, around a fifth of this was available.
The webpage is nearly endless in how far it allows you to search into the fathers on Scripture. The page includes the latest and most comprenseive online indices of quotes on Scripture by the fathers, as well as nearly exhaustive, standard, scholarly works: (1) referring to further commentaries in Latin, and (2) providing the fathers’ citations of Scripture, at a few clicks of the button.
Persons and scholars with interest in Scriptural commentary, or the early and Medieval Christians, and everyone in between, will be elated. Make your interested friends happy.
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“I am the Lord thy God… open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.”
Ps. 81:10
Many more great Bible commentaries have become fully available online in the last several years.
Only around 55% of our collection of over 2,200 Bible commentaries since the Reformation were previously online. Now about 86% are fully online. Not only have many more older reformed and puritan commentaries become available, but so have many newer, good commentaries as well:
Enjoy the depths of God’s Word like never before, whether for personal interest, research or sermon preparation. Let your friends and those who would be interested know.
We are experiencing blessings beyond any that world history has yet seen. To God be the glory!
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“The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure…”
Dt. 28:12
R.C.H. Lenski was an early-1900’s, conservative Lutheran minister and university professor. His twelve volume, in-depth commentary on the New Testament, noted for its emphasis on Greek grammar, is not always easy to find, and is usually expensive.
Now, for the first time, it is fully online!
Lenski, Richard C.H. – Commentary on the New Testament, vol. 1 (Mt), 2 (Mk), 3 (Lk), 4 (Jn), 5 (Acts), 6 (Rom), 7 (1-2 Cor), 8 (Gal-Phil), 9 (Col-Phile), 10 (Heb-Jm), 11 (Pet-Jd), 12 (Rev) (OH: Wartburg Press, 1935-1966)
“A conservative, very extensive and generally helpful exposition based upon an exegesis of the Greek text. Arminian [actually Lutheran] in doctrine, maintains a rigid approach to Greek grammar, and follows an amillennial interpretation of eschatology. Exceedingly helpful background material and abounds in good preaching values.” – Cyril Barber
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To come back to this commentary, see its permanent home on our page, ‘Older, Whole, New Testament Commentaries’.
Some persons say all of life is worship, and see no special significance for the Church’s public worship. Others, often in reaction, hold worship to be only worship ordinances, such as prayer, reading Scripture and singing praise, whether publicly or privately.
Both are wrong, according to Scripture and reformed orthodoxy. Worship, narrowly speaking, is an immediate honoring of God. Keeping God’s commandments mediately honors God, and hence is worship. All of life is worship insofar as worship naturally and Biblically includes anything done out of reference to God.
Reform yourself to the Word and carefully consider our new page of resources, and let them sink deep into your soul:
‘On the Definition of Worship’
Likewise, some of the most fundamental and helpful distinctions about worship, filling out what it is and its nature, have been nearly wholly lost today. Peruse these new pages:
‘On Internal & External Worship’
‘Natural vs. Instituted Worship’
Yes, internal worship is more important than external, and natural more than instituted, according to nature, Scripture (see the many Bible verses on the webpages) and reformed orthodoxy.
If you thought you knew Westminster well, get indepth theological background to what Westminster does and does not say about this subject on the Natural vs. Instituted page:
‘WCF 21.1 & its Theological Context’
Drink deeply of the Lord’s theological teachings, lay hold of all the riches you can, and send them to your friends.
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“Worship God.”
Rev. 22:9
It is commonly thought the Westminster Confession prohibits all recreation on the Lord’s Day; many of the Westminster divines, however, allowed for some recreation.
While recreation is not a proper work of the Lord’s Day, yet there are instances where it may be necessary, consistent with the Lord’s Day, or conducive and beneficial to worship. Travis Fentiman, MDiv, has written a new article demonstrating that Westminster, from its original historical intention, only necessarily prohibits needless worldly recreations on the Lord’s Day.
It appears as the Intro on our Recreation on the Lord’s Day page.
This in-depth article synthesizes many of the ethical and practical issues involved. You will learn A LOT from it. It answers, in a nuanced way, the practical questions so commonly asked: whether it is right on the Lord’s Day for a dad to play catch with his son in the yard with a football, or to make love to one’s spouse.
Take the time to come to a fuller and more integrated understanding of the Lord’s Day, and may it help you to rejoice in our Lord every week all the more!
Do you want to read God’s Word in one of the original languages of Scripture?
Never has it been easier to start on your own. These new webpages of Hebrew and Greek grammars will readily start you on your way.
The pages are also very useful for intermediate and advanced learners. If you are a pastor and would like a refresher, or can benefit by such in your sermon preparation, or if you are a writer or scholar and need to refer to reference grammars, the intermediate and advanced grammars on the webpages will be invaluable. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in one, try another, or all of them.
May these resources be a blessing to you; remember that they are here, and share them with friends if they might use them.
Biblical & Rabbinic Hebrew Grammars & Readers
Ancient & New Testament Greek Grammars & Readers
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“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
2 Tim. 2:15
Great news! The magnum opus of Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), the Dutch reformed, neo-Calvinist theologian, Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. is now fully available, free online to be checked out at Internet Archive.
See Bavinck’s works at our Systematic Theologies page.
His in-depth treatments of each doctrine and interaction with much of Church history, including Reformed Orthodoxy, makes his set one of the most valuable for serious theology in the last few hundred years. Price, nor being away from your library, is no longer a barrier. It may be accessed and linked wherever the internet is found!
Is Paul’s injunction for women to cover their heads in worship binding today (1 Cor. 11:2-16)?
Most of the Reformed, the Scottish covenanters and the Westminster divines in the Reformation and puritan era said ‘No,’ that Paul’s ordinance was relative to his culture, which used this custom.
In the most detailed exegetical and theological treatment of this issue since that era, Travis Fentiman (MDiv, webmaster) argues that this view is conclusive from the Word of God, in his new book:
1 Corinthians – Head-Coverings are Not Perpetual & they were Hair-Buns, with or without Cloth Material: Proven (RBO, 2022) 283 pp.
The book’s Intro and the Overview of the Argument following it will whet your desire to invest the time to look through the rest, from which you will reap many rewards. To see how Corinthian women covered their heads, see the many pictures in the History section on pp. 188-98.
For a summary of the main points of the whole book, see the Summary Conclusions beginning on p. 258. Here is the logical structure of the book’s main argument. Every proposition is thoroughly proven in detail in the book:
1. All positive, instituted worship must be “expressly set down in Scripture” or “by good and necessary consequence… deduced” therefrom (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.6).
2. In Scripture head-coverings, or the lack thereof, bore a variety of contrary meanings and acceptability, or not, in worship. Hence they were clearly cultural.
3. Head-coverings cannot be taught by pure-nature and have no intrinsic value for worshipping God.
4. Paul only uses the language of “dishonor,” “becometh,” “glory” and “custom” about head-coverings, which are all things of social decency, but do not reflect inherent sins. As with head-coverings, Paul uses imperatives in 1 Cor. 7 about things not intrinsically sinful.
5. Some apostolic ordinances were circumstantially conditioned and mutable.
6. Universal moral reasons given for a practice, such as head-coverings, not eating creeping things (Lev. 11:41, 44), the holy kiss, foot-washing, etc. does not necessarily make it perpetual. A context is assumed and generals can only bind generally.
7. There is nothing in 1 Cor. 11 necessitating head-coverings to have a different meaning or use in worship than in society.
8. There is no necessary warrant Corinthian head-coverings were geographically or temporally universal in the apostolic churches; but if they were, this does not itself make an ordinance to be of positive religion, especially as the Greco-Roman culture (which head-coverings were appropriate to) was vast.
9. Part I’s survey of all the relevant Scriptural head-covering data (consider it for yourself) shows there is no express or good and necessary consequence from these texts that Corinthian head-coverings were a positive, perpetual rite of religion (WCF 21.1) beyond circumstances common to human society, ordered by nature’s light, Christian prudence and the Word’s general principles (WCF 1.6), which things may be culturally relative.
10. These things being the case, Paul’s statement that improper head-covering “dishonoreth her head,” (v. 5) must be, not prescriptive, but descriptive, as the case was in that society (which it was). Hence Paul’s natural and spiritual arguments are contingent on this de facto premise. A change of the premise in a different culture where not covering is not dishonoring, changes the conclusion.
As the whole of the Lord’s Day is to be set apart unto the immediate service of the Lord and spiritual duties, apart from necessities, so Isa. 58:13-14 says that:
“If thou turn away thy foot from… doing thy pleasure on my holy day… Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord…”
Hence Westminster Confession, ch. 21, section 8, rightly forbids recreations on the Lord’s Day. Finally, here is a webpage of puritan resources expounding this topic in detail.
It will also be noticed that many of the Westminster divines themselves, in consistency with their intention in the WCF, allow for necessary refreshments and recreations that energize one for, and are consistent with, holy exercises. See especially the quotes by the puritan divine, George Walker.
As the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) is the most experiential, savory and devotional of the Reformation doctrinal standards, so are the commentaries and sermons on it.
We have collected over 40 of these works (about 30 of them are fully online), including study guides and devotionals, new and old alike. If you could benefit from such a volume, or simply desire to look through them, you know where to go. The most recommended volumes are marked with an asterisk.
Do you need a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed? Here is over 35 of them from reformed history:
Commentaries on the Apostles’ Creed
One doctrinal topic that is discussed in such commentaries that is not so commonly treated of elsewhere is the Communion of Saints. The communion of saints is not primarily conversing over a pot-luck with Christians, but entails our spiritual union and fellowship with the whole of Christ’s one Body, the Church, in heaven and on earth, in all places and all times.
On the Communion of the Saints
Enrich your understanding and enflame affections and desires for fellowship with fellow Christian believers, and be sure to check out the sections that:
The Communion of the Saints is Trans-Spatial & Trans-Temporal
Refresh yourself in the faith with this brief poem on the Apostles’ Creed by an English minister in 1640.
In this battling dialogue Satan shames and condemns the Christian, who rises up in spiritual warfare, taking faith in Christ and his Word at every point. May your heart well-up with and abide in this living, conquering faith.
Johnson, Thomas – ‘Stand up to your Christian Belief: Combat between Satan Tempting & a Christian Triumphing in the Comfort of the Apostles’ Creed, a Poem’ (1640) 5 pp.
The Westminster Confession speaks of “the light of nature” in several places (WCF 1.1; 1.6; 10.4; 20.4; 21.1). It says that men may frame their lives according to the light of nature, that some things in the worship of God and Church government are to be ordered by it and that some opinions and practices are contrary to the light of nature. The light of nature also shows that there is a God and manifests his wisdom, goodness and power.
What exactly is the light of nature, and what does it include?
As may be expected, Westminster was drawing upon a whole body of literature before them which answered these questions in some detail. 16 theses delineating the extent and limits of the light of nature, and its relationship to the light of grace, has been newly translated from the early-1600’s, German, reformed divine, Henry Alting.
These propositions will be a fountain of truth and wisdom to you, if you consider them well.
Alting, Henry – ‘A Disputation on the Light of Nature’ trans. T. Fentiman (1628; RBO, 2022) 2 pp. 16 theses
How is it said that God purchased the Church with his blood (Acts 20:28), when God does not have blood? The answer is that it was Christ who bled, who is both God and man.
The attribution of the properties of one of Christ’s natures to the other (such as in Acts 20:28) is called the doctrine of the communication of properties. It is often thought that a real communication of properties is solely a Lutheran teaching. Yet the reformed affirmed this doctrine in a certain respect, that the properties of both natures of Christ are really communicated to his Person.
This new webpage of resources has an Introduction to these issues that will take you into the depths of Christ’s Person in more detail than is commonly available elsewhere. Be as the bride in the Song of Solomon, and love to gaze upon your Savior, and study and recount his every excellency:
On the Communication of the Properties of Christ’s Human & Divine Natures
The highest dogmatic conclusion of an Early Church, ecumenical council (the 6th, AD 680-681) about the Person of Christ, recognized from Scripture, was that his two natures, involving two wills, divine and human, work by two distinct operations (each contributing what is peculiar to itself) unto the same mediatorial work, even our most-costly and precious redemption.
Many are familiar with Christ being one Person with two natures, from the Council of Chalcedon (451). Go further in looking into the depths of our salvation and the glories of our ineffable Savior; find an end to them if you can.
There is a further Introduction on the page to help you.
Christ’s Mediatorial Operations, Divine & Human, unto the Same Work
What will it be like to see God? (Mt. 5:8) This is the end and fruit of the Christian life, forever.
Taste heaven with these newly collected resources from the best of reformed literature (which are not otherwise easy to come by):
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“As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness:
I shall be satisfied, when I awake,
with thy likeness.”
Ps. 17:15
In extra-ordinary circumstances where a sacrament may not be performed in the exact way that Christ prescribed, ought a church to forego the sacrament (or that part of it) or ought principled accommodations be made which keep the essential, spiritual principles of the sacrament?
In the Reformation and puritan era, the Lutherans (the Biblicists of their day) answered the former; those Churches reformed according to the Word of God: the latter.
This new page documents this in detail. The Intro will walk you through the issues and show you from the light of God’s Word and Nature why the reformed position is right. Add further knowledge and understanding to your faith, seeking to please Him in walking more closely according to his Will.
On the Administration of the Sacraments in Extra-Ordinary Circumstances
Perichoresis is a Greek word that refers to the mutual love and indwelling of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Social Trinitarians (rife in evangelicalism today) take this concept to teach that the Father, Son and Spirit have separate wills. The orthodox, early Church councils, on the other hand, rightly taught that God only has one will. God having three wills necessarily implies Tritheism. Hence, perichoresis involves the Father, Son and Spirit as loving each other through the pure, self-reflexive and reciprocal act of their One divine will.
Jesus said that when we spiritually receive Him into our soul through faith, that we enter, in a way, into this communion (Jn. 14:23; 17:21). Enter into the depths of perichoresis with this new page of resources:
It is sometimes argued that the Incarnation of Christ contradicts the unchangeability of God, for if a divine Person became a man in time, then some change must have occured in the divine Person.
Traditional Christianity, however, has held that God, by definition, is able to act on others without changing. In the divine Logos taking to Himself a human nature, there is no change in his Person, but the created human nature is brought into a new relation with Himself. Hence by the Incarnation there is no change in the Divinity, but only a change in the creature.
As in every single point of theology, these things are far deeper than we realize, and in fact, are ultimately unsearchable in their depths. Learn more about your glorious God: