Journal: Puritan Reformed Journal
Volume: PRJ 04:1 (Jan 2012)
Article: From the Editors
Author: Anonymous

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PRJ 4:1 (January 2012) p. 1

From the Editors

The recurrent cycle of the seasons forces human beings to think about the nature of time and its passage: its meaning and goal, its origins and the forces shaping it. Christians are especially people of a Book, a revelation, the Scriptures, which informs them of God’s understanding of our history. In the first essay in this issue David Murray very ably outlines this divine understanding as seen from the vantage-point of the Old Testament. It is a timely piece, as recent events in world history and recent scientific reflections are forcing people to think again about the meaning of history. Now, one of the major strategies by which we deal with the passage of time is to remember: remember specific events that we celebrate year by year, or some that we celebrate more infrequently. Among the latter is one that many thought about this past year, namely, the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible in 1611. Gerald Bilkes helpfully guides us through the preface to that remarkable translation, showing us what it can teach us about Bible translation and our own interaction with the Scriptures. Then Joel Beeke gives us a rich tour through what he rightly calls “the greatest day in the history of the world: the final twenty-four hours of Jesus’ life prior to His crucifixion and death” and helps us appreciate afresh the historicity—and theological significance— of a number of the details in John 18.

It is not often that this journal contains papers on the Anabaptist tradition, which, especially in its origins, has some things to teach those who delight in the Reformed faith. David Saxton’s essay on Michael Sattler is welcome both for the light it throws on this particular Anabaptist’s witness and also because it forces us to recognize God’s work among those who do not identify themselves as specifically Reformed, but who nonetheless love the Lord Jesus. Yet another area in which contemporary Reformed believers are not as informed as they should be is the tremendous stream of French Reformed theology and history. Here, Mark Larson helps us appreciate the great French theologian Pierre du Moulin, who, in some ways, is the most important Francophone theologian in the first half of the seventeenth

PRJ 4:1 (January 2012) p. 2

century. Larson discusses du Moulin’s thought on knowing God, a central topic in Christian thought. Two essays then look at two of du Moulin’s younger contemporaries on the other side of the English Channel: a very needful treatment of John Owen’s thought about the role of the Holy Spirit in the pactum salutis by Laurence O’Donnell and Brian Cosby’s discussion of the Christology of John Flavel. It is good to see Flavel getting inc...

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