January 17, 2010

Why are the Ten Commandments Still for New Covenant Believers?

Why do Reformed Christians (and the Reformed confessions) state that the moral law (the Ten Commandments) remains binding on all men of all ages? Dr. R. Scott Clark answers that question in his latest edition of the Heidelcast.

Clark makes reference to a series by the faculty of Westminster Seminary California entitled, The Law of God and the Christian. You can purchase and download the series via this link.

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Read the Westminster Standards in 40 Days

Joe Holland has organised a group of people online to read through the Westminster Standards in 40 days. His reading plan began yesterday / today (depending on your timezone) but it isn’t too late to start. I’ll be beginning today.

The Westminster Standards include the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), the Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) and the Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC).

You may also be blessed listening to Dr. Wayne Spear give five lectures on the history of the Westminster Assembly that I posted here last year.

If you’re on Twitter be sure to use the official hashtag, #wcs40.

 

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December 17, 2009

There Are More than Tulips in the Reformed Field

Many, including Dr. Muller, have said it before; there is more to Reformed theology than the “five points” of Calvinism. Thanks to Eric Landry over at the White Horse Inn Blog for pointing me to an article by J. Todd Billings where he concludes:

The New Calvinists, with their God-centered message and their focus on dogmatic theology, make a robust contribution to contemporary ecclesial theological conversation. But they tend to obscure the fact that the Reformed tradition has a deeply catholic heritage, a Christ-centered sacramental practice and a wide-lens, kingdom vision for the Christian’s vocation in the world. The New Calvinists pick the TULIP from the Reformed field, overlooking the other flowers. There is much besides the TULIP in this spacious field that has grown from the seed of God’s word.

You can read all of J. Todd Billings article entitled, Calvin’s Comeback? – The Irresistible Reformer, over at The Christian Century.

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December 11, 2009

The Canons of Dordt

The Canons of Dordt (often referred to today as the “Five Points of Calvinism”) are expounded and explained by R. Scott Clark in an edition of Tabletalk Magazine from 2008:

Everyone knows the acronym TULIP, but not everyone knows where this acronym comes from. The Canons of Dordt are among the most famous but unread deliverances of any Reformed Synod. The canons are more than five letters. The canons teach a pastoral doctrine of grace and provide a model for the stewardship of the Gospel.

Read The Canons of Dordt by R. Scott Clark

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November 27, 2009

Dr. Muller asks "How Many Points?"

In an age where to be Reformed is equated with an adherence to “five points,” Dr. Muller asks the question, “How Many Points?”

I once met a minister who introduced himself to me as a “five-point Calvinist.” I later learned that, in addition to being a self-confessed five-point Calvinist, he was also an anti-paedobaptist who assumed that the church was a voluntary association of adult believers, that the sacraments were not means of grace but were merely “ordinances” of the church, that there was more than one covenant offering salvation in the time between the Fall and the eschaton, and that the church could expect a thousand-year reign on earth after Christ’s Second Coming but before the ultimate end of the world. He recognized no creeds or confessions of the church as binding in any way. I also found out that he regularly preached the “five points” in such a way as to indicate the difficulty of finding assurance of salvation: He often taught his congregation that they had to examine their repentance continually in order to determine whether they had exerted themselves enough in renouncing the world and in “accepting” Christ. This view of Christian life was totally in accord with his conception of the church as a visible, voluntary association of “born again” adults who had “a personal relationship with Jesus.”

In retrospect, I recognize that I should not have been terribly surprised at the doctrinal context or at the practical application of the famous five points by this minister — although at the time I was astonished. After all, here was a person, proud to be a five-point Calvinist, whose doctrines would have been repudiated by Calvin. In fact, his doctrines would have gotten him tossed out of Geneva had he arrived there with his brand of “Calvinism” at any time during the late sixteenth or the seventeenth century. Perhaps more to the point, his beliefs stood outside of the theological limits presented by the great confessions of the Reformed churches—whether the Second Helvetic Confession of the Swiss Reformed church or the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism of the Dutch Reformed churches or the Westminster standards of the Presbyterian churches. He was, in short, an American evangelical.

You can read Muller’s full article reproduced from the Calvin Theological Journal, Vol. 28 (1993): 425-33 over at the Riddleblog.

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November 10, 2009

Confessionally Reformed Twitter Lists

Recently, Twitter released the long awaited feature Twitter Lists. These lists allow those on Twitter to better organise people they follow into groups or categories. Better yet, you can follow a “list” and receive updates from all those in the list without having to follow those people individually. For example, a company or group blog could create a list with all their employees or contributors, and you could simply follow that list to receive all their updates.

As a result of this there have been many lists started simply entitled “Reformed.”  These lists are very generic and most often simply mean, do you agree to most of the “five points” of Calvinism. I thought it would be helpful, at least for me, to have some confessional lists. Therefore, I created three lists:

@nwbingham/conf-westminster (for those who confess the Westminster Standards)

@nwbingham/conf-threeforms (for those who confess the Three Forms of Unity)

@nwbingham/conf-london1689 (for those who confess the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith)

If you’re on Twitter and you hold to one of these confessions, leave a comment with your Twitter username and I’ll add you to the list.

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October 28, 2009

The Myth of Non-Doctrinal Christianity

Martin Downes posted this great quote by Edward Roberts:

When you hear anyone say ‘Away with creeds,’ you know that what he really means is ‘take mine.’

Quote by Edward Roberts taken from The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century, Vol. 1

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October 16, 2009

Semper Reformanda

If you’ve been in Protestant circles for very long, whether conservative or liberal, you may have heard the phrase “reformed and always reforming” or sometimes just “always reforming.” I hear it a lot these days, especially from friends who want our Reformed churches to be more open to moving beyond the faith and practice that is confessed in our doctrinal standards. Even in Reformed circles of late, various movements have arisen that challenge these standards. How can confessions and catechisms written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries guide our doctrine, life, and worship in the twenty-first? Liberal Protestants frequently invoked this phrase to justify their captivity to the spirit of the age, but some conservative Protestants also use it to encourage a broader definition of what it means to be Reformed.

What will no doubt be provocative to many is Michael Horton’s following statement:

[To them] This means that to be Reformed is simply to be reformed and to be reformed is simply to be biblical. All who base their beliefs on the Bible are therefore “reformed,” regardless of whether their interpretations are consistent with the common confessions of the Reformed churches. However, this runs counter to the original intention of the phrase.

Continue reading Horton’s brief treatment of the history and meaning of Semper Reformanda at Ligonier Ministries.

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September 18, 2009

Spear on The History of the Westminster Assembly

Dr. Wayne Spear is professor emeritus of systematic theology at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, having served for thirty-five years as an active faculty member. His doctoral dissertation was on The Form of Presbyterian Church Government, and he has become a recognized expert on the Assembly and the Confession. Dr. Spear currently serves as a ruling elder in his local church. He and his wife of fifty years, Mary, have five children and twenty-six grandchildren.

In April 2009, Dr. Wayne Spear delivered a series of five edifying lectures on the history of the Westminster Assembly.

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September 16, 2009

The Westminster Confession of Faith Today

And so it is that chapter by chapter, the Westminster Confession of Faith traces with bold strokes the great history of our redemption. The sad realities of the fall, God’s gracious covenants with man, the stunning announcement of salvation, and our sure hope of eternal life – all these are sketched out here in bold, but considered strokes. Who can read this text and not be warned that those who ignore the Holy Scripture are doomed to stumble through the world in darkness? And who can read this Confession and not see that those who embrace the true God, believe what he promises, and walk by his precepts, will never be without a guide or a light for this life? It is because of the clarity of this gospel message in all of its parts that the Westminster Confession of Faith finds itself in the first rank of great Christian creeds. Perhaps it is the wisest of creeds in its teaching and the finest in its doctrinal expression. Certainly it is a reliable guide to the Scriptures, which are the only guide to God. It is my hope that all who follow its directions will find their way to the Father’s home, through the grace and mercy of the Son and by the power of his Holy Spirit.

Read the rest of Chad Van Dixhoorn’s thoughts on the Westminster Confession of Faith at Reformation21

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