Oosterhoff Blogs on Estates & Trusts - Volume 1 is a compilation of blogs on a wide range of estate, trust and related subjects written by Albert H. Oosterhoff between 2016 and 2021 and published to the Whaley Estate Litigation Partners Blog site.The blogs do not simply review new cases and statutes, but usually provide extensive historical background. Case and statute critiques are provided when they run counter to established principles, or do not go far enough in reforming the l...

Common grace has generally been thought of as a doctrine developed and promoted by Abraham Kuyper. However, John Calvin also discussed the concept in some detail. In the 1930s Klaas Schilder began writing about the doctrine and was quite critical of various aspects of Kuyper’s views. In his seminal dissertation, originally published in 1966, Jochem Douma first presents the ideas of Kuyper, Schilder, and Calvin, respectively, and then proceeds to compare and evaluate them. He has objections...

If any single word in the Christian vocabulary captures our relationship to--and responsibility for--the environment, that word is stewardship. It is a word that brings into view the relationship between humanity and the natural world of water, land, animals, and fellow human beings. Nevertheless, today, some people think Christianity, especially Calvinism, is largely responsible for many of our environmental problems. The language of exercising dominion, subduing the earth, creation manda...

Bart D. Ehrman, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus, Interrupted and God’s Problem reveals which books in the Bible’s New Testament were not passed down by Jesus’s disciples, but were instead forged by other hands—and why this centuries-hidden scandal is far more significant than many scholars are willing to admit. A controversial work of historical reporting in the tradition of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan, Ehrman’s Forged delivers a stunning explication...

New York Times–bestselling author Garry Wills provides a provocative analysis of the theological and historical basis for the priesthoodIn a riveting and provocative tour de force from the author of What Jesus Meant, Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills poses the challenging question: Why did the priesthood develop in a religion that began without it and, indeed, was opposed to it? Why Priests? argues brilliantly and persuasively fo...

**From the National Book Award-winning and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition."Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." —The Boston Globe**With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan’s story into an aud...

Victors not only write history: they also reproduce the texts. Bart Ehrman explores the close relationship between the social history of early Christianity and the textual tradition of the emerging New Testament, examining how early struggles between Christian "heresy" and "orthodoxy" affected the transmission of the documents over which many of the debates were waged. He makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the social and intellectual history of early Christianity and rais...

Geza Vermes, translator and editor of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls and worldwide expert on the life and times of Jesus, tells the enthralling story of early Christianity and the origins of a religion.The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. With a forensic, brilliant re-examination of all the key su...

Theology—the study of God—is a concern for every believer, not just theologians or those in ministry. It's the goal of good theology to humble us before the triune God of majesty as we come to understand him better. This is a book of and about good theology.Award-winning author, theologian, and professor Michael Horton wrote The Christian Faith as a book of systematic theology and doctrine "that can be preached, experienced, and lived, as well as ...

Historical Theology presents the key pillars of the contemporary church and the development of those doctrines as they evolved from the history of Christian thought.Most historical theology texts follow Christian beliefs in a strict chronological manner with the classic theological loci scattered throughout various time periods, movements, and controversies—making for good history but confusing theology.This companion to the classic bestseller ...

What is the role of the will in believing the good news of the gospel? Why is there so much controversy over free will throughout church history? R. C. Sproul finds that Christians have often been influenced by pagan views of the human will that deny the effects of Adam's fall.In Willing to Believe, Sproul traces the free-will controversy from its formal beginning in the fifth century, with the writings of Augustine and Pelagius, to the present. Readers will gain understand...

The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding.Through a forensic, brilliant reexamination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was—a prophet recognizable as the successor to other Jewish h...