I just heard from some very old friends with whom I’ve been out of touch for a long time, only to discover they are now serving the Lord in student ministry in Athens, (that’s in Greece, not Georgia!) Thought I’d direct your attention to their work here.
Discover some of the wicked causes of our cultural descent into ’Inglish’ here
Caspar Olevianus’ (1536-1587) exposition of the Creed is now available (buy it here). It is the second volume in the Classic Reformed Theology series which seeks to provide unprecedented access to the previously unavailable writings of the seminal figures of the classical age of Reformed orthodox theology for a contemporary English audience. This volume, along with William Ames’ Sketch of the Christian’s Catechism (the first in the series), provides an invaluable insight into the thinking of one of the most important foundational proponents of Reformation theology.
Sean makes a great point about the roots of evangelical susceptibility to liberalism. As long as Kantian dualism continues to be embraced uncritically, and evangelicals gush on about ‘heart’ and forget ‘head’ the draw of liberal theology will be hard to resist.
1. It is the general opinion of the greater part of evangelicalism today, including the Reformed variety, that Christ rules as King over a single Kingdom comprising civil/cultural and spiritual/ecclesiastical dimensions. Christians are to ‘build the Kingdom’ from the church outwards ’til it permeates every sphere of human culture.
2. Christ said in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Likewise Paul, in Ephesians 6:12, said, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”. And in 2 Corinthians 10:4, “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds”.
Christ’s kingdom, which, on common evangelical assumptions, is a single unified thing, is not advanced, according to Jesus, by force. We don’t wrestle, Paul explains, with flesh and blood in the holy violence of kingdom warfare. We do use weapons, but their targets are ideas and convictions, and their nature is consequently spiritual. In short the kingdom does not advance by means of the sword.
3. In Romans 13:4 Paul wrote of the civil magistrate that “he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” 1 Peter 2:13 requires us to be “subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. 15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.”
Peter and Paul both approve the office of civil magistrate as a godly and honorable profession appointed by God and one in which a Christian can engage without guilt. According to the consensus of evangelical sentiments on this point, when Christians engage in such activities as enforcing the law as, say, police officers, judges, or legislators, they are involved in “Kingdom building” work.
4. If the Kingdom is not advanced by ‘the sword’, that is, by means of physical coercion, but the God ordained role of the civil magistrate is to use the sword to enforce the rule of law, how can the Christian’s work as a civil magistrate be the work of the Kingdom?
Unless of course there are Two… er… things.. you know… whatssernames….thingamebobs….
…Kingdoms!
Here is a sermon I preached some time ago on the subject of Sabbath observance from Mark 2:23-28. Enjoy!
“A few years ago a friend telephoned me with an urgent request” writes Philip Ryken. “‘Phil’, he said, ‘I’m calling to ask a favor. I need the most precious thing you have’.” (Philip Ryken, Written in Stone, pp 101) What do you think he was asking for? The most precious thing he had? It was some of his time of course. Time is a precious commodity. We have to prioritize what we can and can’t do with our time. In fact, I’m sure you’ll agree that the way we use the limited time resources available to us says a great deal about the true priorities about our lives. How we invest our time unmasks what is really dear to us. It is a sad and alarming mark of the contemporary church’s true spiritual condition, therefore, to observe that Sunday has been reduced to the Lord’s hour instead of the Lord’s Day.
Now there are those who resist the idea that one day in seven is to be set apart wholly to God, for the spiritual benefits of our souls. It is too hefty a tax on my time, we tell ourselves. Sunday is ‘me-time’, and you’ll be restricting my enjoyment of ‘me-time’ if you call me to set the day apart for ‘God’. It is enough for me to turn up at church, surely? By mid-day I feel I have paid my religious dues. And after that my time is mine, to be spent in whatever way I prefer, and God had best keep his hands off.
Confronted with the idea of Sabbath our immediate reaction is to think about all the fun we are going to miss out on isn’t it? We think of the Sabbath as a burdensome, ugly, heavy, unhappy day, marked by morbid introspection and arid, joyless, bare duty; a day where none of the things we really like to do are permitted. Well, interestingly that view of the Sabbath shares some central common convictions with the Pharisees who met Jesus in our passage for today, in Mark chapter 2. Will you look at it with me? Mark 2:23-28. Read the rest of this entry »
Given that the Westminster Confession and Catechisms continue to be the subordinate standards of the PCA, even with exceptions being granted by presbyteries, it does not seem unreasonable to expect to find a higher degree of reverence for, and diligence in the practise of, Sabbath observance among us. My, albeit limited, observations thus far have not affirmed that expectation, sad to say. In fact, my perception is that, in the PCA at least, Westminster Sabbatarianism is a strange and little known and even less loved feature of Christian devotion.
I am still wrestling with why that is, and even more with how best to address it. However here are a few commonly heard ‘reasons’ for rejecting historic Sabbatarianism… Read the rest of this entry »
Iain D Campbell has an excellent piece here, correcting some of the assumptions we tend to make about Jesus’ birth narratives and their significance.
This is an encouraging initiative that looks like it may hold real hope for the advance of the gospel cause in Scotland and break the stalemate between the evangelical wing of the mainline Church of Scotland, and the conservative Free Church and Associate Presbyterians.
It is an initiative sponsored by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church here in the USA, with an advisory board from the three Scottish denominations just mentioned. The aim is to plant a new presbytery of Reformed Churches that will, I hope, move past the historic church-political differences that have hitherto stymied cross denominational unity among some of the Reformed churches in Scotland.
Andy Webb makes a fascinating and compelling historical case against a liturgical calendar and specifically Christmas. With Andy I agree with the Westminster Divines that the church may not bind the conscience to the observation of any other day than the Sabbath day.
However, I would note that for weal or woe, American’s show up in church at Christmas. I take that opportunity and hold services to which they may come. Those services are billed as evangelistic opportunities, not devotional and liturgical occassions facilitating the observation of ‘Advent’. I preach on the Incarnation and the Cross. We sings psalms and hymns (Yes carols!) that meditate on the meaning of the first advent of Christ. I urge men and women to repent and believe the gospel. Is that an ecclesiastical ‘celebration of Christmas’, or is it gospel opportunism, that by any means we might save some?
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”. (You can listen to it here)
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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… Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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
