Knox Blog

For the final article in this short series on Reformed theology, I want to address what may be the elephant in the room for some: Can Baptists be truly Reformed? Isn’t the label Reformed reserved for Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed churches, or other paedobaptist traditions? I want to argue succinctly that not only can Baptists be Reformed, but that Reformed Baptists did not arise outside the Reformed tradition; they arose within it. Reformed Baptists are not Reformed by adopti

If you—like me—grew up in evangelical Christianity, you probably feel some level of discomfort when people speak about creeds, confessions, and catechisms. Your first instinct may be, “Isn’t that Roman Catholic? We, evangelical, born-again Christians, believe in the Bible alone.”  Sadly, many evangelicals have missed something that has been central to the Christian faith throughout history, largely because of a misunderstanding of the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura .

My name is Maria Belem Penner. I was raised in the Mormon church, where I was taught that being close to God came through good behaviour, keeping the Ten Commandments, and being baptized. I was baptized at eight years old, and for most of my life, I never questioned the beliefs I had been taught. In May 2022, my parents tragically passed away in a car accident. In that moment, I felt completely alone. I believed God had abandoned me, and my heart was empty and broken. I began

My name is Juan Penner. I grew up in a home where my parents had different religious beliefs—my mother was Catholic, and my father was Mennonite. Because of this, there were often disagreements and discussions about faith, and from a young age, I was left wondering who was right, what was true, and how I could know for myself. I always had a desire to understand the truth about God, but everyone around me seemed to have different opinions. When I moved to the United States at

In this series of articles on Reformed theology, I have been seeking to shed light on what it truly means to be Reformed. As noted in previous posts, the label Reformed  has become increasingly popular over the last few decades, largely due to movements such as the Young, Restless, and Reformed , which helped popularize Calvinistic soteriology—a strong emphasis on God’s sovereignty in salvation. Historically, however, being Reformed means far more than holding to Calvinist so

As I briefly developed in the previous article in this series, Reformed theology is a cohesive system sustained by three essential pillars—the Three Cs: Confessionalism, Calvinism, and Covenant Theology . In this series, I have been addressing the dangers of embracing one of these pillars while neglecting the others. In this article, I want to focus on what is perhaps the most concerning danger in our time: Calvinism without a covenantal framework and confessional boundaries

As mentioned in the article “What Does It Mean to Be Reformed?” , Reformed theology is centred around three inseparable commitments—the Three Cs : Covenantal, Confessional, and Calvinistic. In that article, I briefly explained what each of these means and concluded by noting that there are dangers in embracing parts of Reformed theology while neglecting the whole. This is what we begin to explore here. Reformed theology is not a buffet of doctrines and practices from which we