Confess the Creed: Review of a Pattern of Sounds Words

1700 years ago, a council of bishops met in the city of Nicaea, summoned by Emperor Constantine to discuss and settle numerous issues. The most important issue on the table was the doctrine of God. Arius (250-336), an influential leader in Alexandria, taught that Jesus, the Son, was created and not equal to the Father. Arius popularised the tune about Jesus, “There once was a time when he was not.” At the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Arius’s teaching was weighed next to Scripture, and he was condemned as a heretic. His theology was outside the bounds of Christian...

Scott Hurst

A Christmastide meditation on Christina Rossetti’s “In the bleak mid-winter”

Michael A. G. Haykin

Episcopal Baptists?

Christian Clement-Schlimm

What Can We Learn from the Life of Patrick of Ireland?

Johnny Markin

Phillis Wheatley: The Senegambian Slave-Turned-Poet

Angie Velasquez Thornton

Who is Irenaeus of Lyons?

James R. Payton, Jr.

In the 180s AD, Irenaeus of Lyons established himself as the greatest theologian since the time of the apostles when he wrote A Refutation and Subversion of What is Falsely Called Knowledge—more commonly known as Against Heresies [AH] (the shortened title given the work by the church historian Eusebius)—and Presentation of the Apostolic Preaching. These took strikingly different approaches: AH offered a painstaking analysis and criticism of various heretical perspectives, while Apostolic Preaching presented an extended summary of what Christians believe and teach. Both works presented the Christian faith winsomely, as the message proclaimed by Jesus Christ and his apostles...

Who is Irenaeus of Lyons?

James R. Payton, Jr.

Blandina: A Sister in Christ and a Spiritual Mother

Wyatt Graham

It may sound odd that a young slave girl who died in AD 177 is a hero of mine. It might be stranger to say that I named my second child after Blandina—or at least after the crown that she gained by martyrdom. But she is, and I did. So just who is Blandina? She was a young slave girl who died as a martyr in Lyons, France in AD 177. She had no Roman Citizenship, no rights as a slave, was young, and was described as having a weak body. Yet by her faith, her encouragement of the saints,...

Blandina: A Sister in Christ and a Spiritual Mother

Wyatt Graham

Olaudah Equiano: The Unsung Evangelist

Christian Clement-Schlimm

Olaudah Equiano is a name of lasting significance in secular historical discussions, English literary circles, and among students of evangelical church history. Yet, his legacy is not nearly as widely known to the Church at large, certainly not to the degree of figures such as Jonathan Edwards or John Newton. This is truly lamentable. Stolen as a boy from the Kingdom of Benin, Equiano was taken to the slave markets in Barbados, and eventually bought by a ship’s captain in Virginia. After amazing and terrifying travels throughout the Atlantic world, he ultimately landed in England where he became a leading...

Olaudah Equiano: The Unsung Evangelist

Christian Clement-Schlimm

Stones of Remembrance: Ontario’s First African Methodist Chapels

Christian Clement-Schlimm

In Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth Century Ontario, William Westfall recounts the captivating story of how Ontario was once a bastion of a distinctive and dominant Protestant culture that shaped both the life and landscape of the province. If you are unfamiliar with this history, I highly recommend getting acquainted with it. Christians in Ontario have a remarkable heritage to tap into and learn from, especially as we seek to minister to an increasingly disinterested or even antagonistic world today. Lesser known still, taking place simultaneously with the events chronicled in Westfall’s book and contemporaneous to the culture-shaping...