This is an excerpt from the third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.
To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.

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The time constrained authoring of the Augustana caused great angst, for the part of Melanchthon that was never satisfied with his own literary output.
Like any language, the liturgy has syntax—a structure that provides order and intelligibly communicates meaning through all that is said.
All other subjects—even Biblical subjects—were subservient to an accurate view of the Person and work of Jesus Christ for sinners.
What every heresy does, in one way or another, is ungods God, unchristens Christ, uncrucifies the Crucified. It strikes through the good of Good News.
(This article first appeared in Modern Reformation and is posted here with permission.)
Nonetheless, if we wish to treat apologetics as a practical endeavor for concrete engagement with people who ask about Christianity, it seems best to start with the questions young people are actually asking.
Instead of answering this question theoretically, perhaps it will be easier to illustrate the problem of understanding God through our human speculation by considering the legend of St. George and the Dragon.
The 21st century is simply not compatible with a reformational mindset. Daniel Dennett argues in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) that conservative Christians better serve their secular neighbors as specimens in a cultural zoo, relics of a bygone world.
In some ways, though, it seems that scientism may increasingly be the greater of the two dangers in American higher education. Not only has Helen Rittelmeyer, for example, made a case for relativism (at least in the ethical realm) being effectively dead and buried.
One gets science or religion, but not both. Today’s model swings to the other end of the pendulum, flirting with an extreme inclusivity. One gets science and religion, as long as they are properly understood.
"For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst." This should therefore be our starting place for understanding the basis of the doctrine.
Some consider apologetics, with its emphasis on rational arguments and empirical evidence, a distinctly “modern” enterprise. Thus, however legitimate or useful it might once have been, now that we have taken an allegedly “postmodern” turn.