For more than thirty years, Tabletalk has existed as a magazine for laymen. Generally speaking, laymen receive either very little instruction in the weightier matters of the faith, or the instruction is too academic, thereby making the material largely inaccessible to average laymen. This is the reason Tabletalk exists — to bridge the gap between these two poles, to explain to the people of God important, biblical doctrines and events while admonishing them toward holy living.
Contributors include R.C. Sproul along with Wes Callihan, Robert Strimple, Wynn Kenyon, R.C. Sproul Jr., Robert Barnes, Sinclair Ferguson, Edmund Clowney, and Jim Spradlin. Tabletalk features articles about topics central to the Christian faith and daily, in-depth Bible studies.
“Giants such as Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm understood that there is a difference between faith and reason, but though they carefully distinguished the two, they never resorted to separating or divorcing them. They saw a symbiotic relationship between the two.” (Page 6)
“Although Anselm stated that God’s honor would be preserved by either satisfaction being made or punishment being handed out, he also insisted (inconsistently) that God had to save a certain number of men and women in order to preserve His own honor as the One who had originally created humankind for happiness. John Calvin, on the other hand, affirmed that the holy God need not have saved anyone. The explanation of why He chose unworthy, guilty, hell-deserving sinners for salvation lies hidden in the unsearchable riches of His sovereign grace in Christ.” (Page 57)
“The most significant modification of Anselm’s theory by the Reformers was that they viewed the sufferings of Christ on the cross as penal, as the vicarious bearing of the penalty owing to the sins of men and women, rather than simply (as in Cur Deus Homo) as the voluntary offering of a gift of infinite value to the honor of God. Instead of Anselm’s disjunction, ‘either satisfaction or punishment,’ the Reformers offered the biblical doctrine, ‘satisfaction by punishment.’” (Page 57)
“In Anselm’s argument, the life of Christ seems to have only a rather negative significance: it was necessary that the God-man be sinless in His life so that the death He offered to God might not be something that He owed to God. The Reformers, on the other hand, saw the necessity not only of Christ’s vicarious death to satisfy the curse of the law, but also of His incarnate life of active obedience to fulfill the positive demand of the law.” (Page 57)
Tabletalk has been a key ingredient in the diet of Christians conscious of their spiritual vitality.
—Michael S. Horton
Month by month, Tabletalk represents an oasis in a desert of false spirituality, mindless Christianity, and vapid conviction. Tabletalk represents theological rigor, biblical Christianity, and authentic Christian devotion. It is an antidote to the world of superficial Christianity. Read it and grow.
—R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Tabletalk has been a wonderful resource in my own daily walk with the Lord.
—Ravi Zacharias