Some Festive Ruminations

Last Lord’s Day evening we began a short series of Advent sermons asking Anselm’s famous question, ‘Cur Deus Homo?’- why did Jesus come? The first part of our answer looked at 1 Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief”.

 What strikes me about Paul’s message here is that, in context, his response to ‘Christmas’, that is, to the coming of Christ to save sinners, is utterly lacking in what we might consider anything like adequate festive sentiment.

Reformation to Germany: Landfried Project

My good friend, Sebastian Heck, of Reformation to Germany writes  of an exciting new development in the work of establishing a confessional reformed church in Germany…

2012

While on vacation this week I saw 2012. It was a fairly predictable disaster movie specimen, with all the obligatory near misses and explosions, that, like Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings, always accompany such cinematic festivities.

Nevertheless, amidst the tsunamis, pyroclastic flows, and shifting of tectonic plates, and despite the best attempts of one small, struggling, dysfunctional, all-American family to divert our attention by their constant near obliteration, occassional ideas actually bobbed to the surface like a bit of flotsam from a rapidly sinking ship.

Measure it by the Marks

R Scott Clark helps people navigating their way through the hard question of when and how to leave a generically evangelical church, lacking the marks of a true church,  in favour of a confessionally Reformed congregation, here.

Sermon on Natural Law and Romans 2:1-16

With fear and trembling I’ve begun to work through Romans at Main Street. You can listen to last Lord’s Day’s sermon dealing with, among other things, the subject of natural law here

Paul Jones lectures on reformed music, hymnody, and psalmody

Part One: Music Singing and the Protestant Reformation

Part Two: Martin Luther and Reformation Hymnody

Part Three: John Calvin and the Recovery of Psalm Singing

Part Four: Hymnody in a Post-hymnody World.

More from Helm’s Deep on Natural Law

You can read more excellent thoughts from Paul Helm on ‘Natural Law’ here and here. 

The first of these deals with some biblical foundations for thinking about natural law. Helm insightfuly points out, for example, that during the period when sin reigned before the law was given (Romans 5:13-14), the period from Adam to Moses, there was nevertheless an awareness among both the covenantal (e.g. Abraham) and extra-covenantal (e.g. Abimelech) characters in the Genesis narrative of moral norms which do not rest on verbal revelation.

The second picks up where the first left off and seeks to demonstrate that there is really no great conflict between natural law and common grace, rightly understood.  Helm argues that Bavinck and Kuyper are responding to counter-reformation Roman Catholic treatments of natural law rather than to Aquinas and Calvin, which leads them to overstate the contrast between natural law and common grace. For Helm, the two are the same thing viewed from different angles, or at least that they overlap significantly.

As an aside, reading these its clear that Helm would not disagree with VanDrunen about natural law (he cites him again approvingly in the first article), which rather begs the question- which of them is misunderstanding Van Til, when Helm pits him against the natural law convictions both he and VanDrunen share, and VanDrunen embraces VanTilian presuppositionalism, which, apparently, Helm rejects?

More from De Young on the Kingdom

De Young on why we do not ‘bring in God’s kingdom’, here

Paul Helm takes a pop at presuppositionalists

In a fascinating essay in which the ever insightful Paul Helm takes aim at the isolation of theology as a science from other sciences, along the way he fires a broadside at Van Tilian presuppositionalism. Now I am no Van Til expert, but I would anticipate that presups. would not recognize Van Til’s position in Helm’s critique, especially where he links Van Til’s position with Barth’s ‘Nein!’ to natural theology.  Given his dislike of presuppositionalism, it is interesting that Helm points to David VanDrunen and JV Fesko of Westminster Seminary, California, as representatives of a return to what he considers an older Reformed appreciation of natural theology that puts some fresh distance between the confessional Reformed community and presuppositional apologetics. I wonder if these men would agree…

Wrath Revealed

I preached on Romans 1:18-32 last Sabbath morning. You can listen to it here.

Notes on continuing reformation at a congregational level

Billy Sunday 'preaching'

I offer the following advice based on sometimes painful experience and the sanctifying process of still trying to live out these lessons once learned.

No reformation can come unless it is truth led. That is to say the force of your personality might sway the decision-making process- you might be able to shout down or persuade your elders to do things your way- but a deep-rooted and lasting reformation in a local congregation only takes place when hearts and minds (both inside and out with the Session) are persuaded by clear teaching showing that the reforms you advocate are important, helpful, and biblical.

2. Reformation will not ordinarily come about in a year, or in two, but may be accomplished in ten or fifteen.  Plan on outliving, out serving, and out loving those who might otherwise be resistant to reform.

Without excuse

“On the day of reckoning, when the men of all nations and all ages shall stand around the judgment-seat, there is not one who will be pronounced an outcast of condemnation there, who will not feel an echo in his own conscience to the righteousness of the sentence under which he has fallen.”

Thomas Chalmers, Lectures on Romans, Works, Vol. II, New York, 1850

Justin Taylor looks back at Piper’s call to pastoral ministry

Check it out here

False Teachers, or, What happens when you leave the ‘Keys’ lying around

How do false teachers sneak into pulpits, even in otherwise generally orthodox denominations?

In light of the various controversies that have wracked sideline Reformed communions like my own in recent years, that is no longer a merely academic question to answer. It is a critical and urgent one.

And at least part of the answer surely has to do with our use or neglect of the Keys of the Kingdom.

Have we been in such a rush to be ‘incarnational’ that we have left the Keys lying around unused and nelgected?  Have we become so enamoured with being ‘missional’, with having a great band, and the right look, with ethnographic study and ‘cultural engagement’ and the heady task of changing the world, that we have neglected or disdained altogether doctrinal precision, careful expositional preaching, the faithful administration of the sacraments and the concomittant excercise of church discipline?

Is there any wonder that squatters have come to occupy the Master’s house when we have left the Key’s lying around so carelessly, undervalued and underused?

I’m just asking.

What is an evangelical Anglican anyway?

This report illustrates the growing problem of definition in the Anglican Communion: ‘What exactly is an Anglican evangelical?’ Of course, that debate is simply another piece of evidence that the word ‘evangelical’,  without any additional qualifier, has long since passed its use by date.