Worldlings on a Treadmill
By : Reformed Free Publishing Association
The following review was written by Dr. H. David Schuringa on Ecclesiastes: A Reflective Exposition by Thomas Miersma (Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing, 2023). This review was originally published in the May 13, 2023 issue of Christian Renewal magazine, a publication on Reformed worldview that can be read here. To many, the book of Ecclesiastes may at best be a conundrum, at worse, a downer. We all know the happy ending, but an endless, dusty pathway of negativism to get there? Seems kind of like a...
Read MoreHis Truth is Marching On
By : Reformed Free Publishing Association
Unfolding Covenant History: An Exposition of the Old Testament, Volume 6: From Samuel to Solomon by David J. Engelsma (Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2020). Hardcover, 224 pages. Reviewed by H. David Schuringa, a Reformed theologian living in West Michigan. Unfolding Covenant History is a multi-volume commentary on the Old Testament initiated by Prof. Homer C. Hoeksema (volumes 1–6), and taken up by Prof. David J. Engelsma. Following his completion of volume 5 on the period of the Judges, is now...
Read MoreThe Belgic: "A Confession of the Gospel in all its riches"
By : Reformed Free Publishing Association
The Belgic Confession: A Commentary, Volumes I–II by David J. Engelsma. Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2018–19. 348 and 382 pages. Reviewed by Dr. H. David Schuringa, a reformed theologian living in West Michigan (as reviewed in the July 24, 2019 issue of Christian Renewal).
The publishing of Dr. David Engelsma’s two-volume commentary on the Belgic Confession is a welcome event due not only to its meaty content but also to meager current resources. The historic confession comprises a complete dogmatics in its own right as it follows the usual outline of the loci with the doctrines of the Word, God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, Ecclesiology and Eschatology.
Engelsma maintains, however, that though the confession is doctrinal and systematic, it is not a systematic theology as such but rather, “the confession of the gospel in all its riches as this gospel is known by every illumined mind and embraced by every regenerated heart” (II:366f.). That is certainly true in large measure, which in turn makes these two volumes Engelsma’s own dogmatics of sorts. What Berkhof did for Bavinck, he does for Hoeksema.
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