October 2025 Ordained Servant

From the Editor. Each October I ransack my church history files and library to find a notable birth or death year. Michael J. Lynch’s “John Cameron at 400” (1555–1625) explores a little known but important post-Reformation pastor-theologian. Throughout “his turbulent career, he was a faithful Reformed minister and professor without any significant moral failings.” Dr. Lynch is a member of Emmanuel OPC in Wilmington, Delaware, and teaches classical languages and humanities at Delaware Valley Classical School. He is the author of John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism (OUP, 2021).

As I said last month, I have begun a series of brief editorials on topics of interest to me that I think will be enjoyed by you my faithful readers. As a train lover in the line of Machen, I offer “The Train: Belittled and Beloved.”

Danny Olinger continues the series “Jesus, Stab Me in the Heart! Flannery O’Connor at 100” with an analysis of the O’Connor short story “The Displaced Person.” Each month Olinger will be reflecting on a sample of O’Connor’s short stories (I recommend O’Connor: Collected Works, The Library of America, 1988). After reading this month’s offering, I came across a quotation in a new biography of poet John Keats from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act V, scene 1)[1] that perfectly sums up the trajectory of O’Connor’s fiction. Mr. Olinger agreed.

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Andy Wilson’s review article, “Redefining Good and Evil,” reviews Carl R. Trueman’s To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse. This eye-opening book instructs us about a theory that has been around for more than a century but has recently taken on popular expression in the cultural turmoil we are experiencing throughout the West, especially in our educational institutions, which of course influence every other institution.

Shane Lems reviews John Swinton’s Finding Jesus in the Storm. This book is a healthy reminder for those who counsel, that mental health challenges are a real part of our human condition as fallen people.

Ryan McGraw reviews Ford and Wilhite’s Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls, which was written to assist pastors and elders in learning the art of pastoral ministry from the church fathers.

My poem this month, “Summer’s Lease,” was inspired by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18.

Blessings in the Lamb,
Gregory Edward Reynolds

FROM THE ARCHIVES “CHURCH HISTORY”
https://opc.org/OS/pdf/Subject_Index.pdf

• “The Use and Abuse of Church History.” (J. G. Vos) 5:2 (Apr. 1996): 39–41.
• “Needed: Congregational Historians.” (John R. Muether) 31 (2022): 39–43.

Ordained Servant exists to help encourage, inform, and equip church officers for faithful, effective, and God-glorifying ministry in the visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its primary audience is ministers, elders, and deacons of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as well as interested officers from other Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Through high-quality editorials, articles, and book reviews, we will endeavor to stimulate clear thinking and the consistent practice of historic, confessional Presbyterianism.

[1] Lucasta Miller, Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph (Knopf, 2022), 61.