This week on Theology on the Go, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. Greg Beale, who is currently a professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.    He has also served been on the faculty of Grove City College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Wheaton College.  He also served as the president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2004.  On this installment of Theology on the Go, Dr. Beale talks with Jonathan about the important topic of the New Testament's use of the Old Testament.

I want to start this little essay by asking a somewhat provocative question: “When does eschatology begin?” Eschatology is a fancy little theological word that means the doctrine of the last things. Another way of putting the question to you is: “When do the last days begin?”

Have you ever been afraid of being left behind?  Did you ever wonder if you would wake up one morning to find your parents and family raptured while you remained alone on earth?  Or, did you ever worry about bar codes, computers, and a cash-less society for fear of unknowingly accepting the mark of the beast? 

Normally we get to the end of the story at…well…the end of the story. Perhaps you are one of those folk who like to read the end of the story before beginning at the beginning? With the Bible there is no real need to do that. Let me explain to you why.

I love to see families walking through the doors of the auditorium on Lord's Day morning.  I see each of them as a living stone coming together to form a living temple in order to worship the living God.  They were once like the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision scattered about in the valley of the shadow of death. 

Corporate Worship, the gathering together of the saints to hear God’s word read and preached, to pray, sing, and commune together around the Lord’s Supper, is central to what it means to be a worshipping church (Hebrews 10:29; Acts 2:42). Within the Protestant tradition, as the Rev. Terry Johnson noted on this week’s podcast, much hasn’t changed - until recently.

One of the hallmarks of Presbyterian and Reformed churches (including Reformed Baptist congregations) is our approach to corporate public worship. While we affirm the importance of private and family worship, the emphasis has usually fallen on public worship.

This week on Theology on the Go, Dr. Jonathan Master is again joined by Rev. Terry Johnson, who is Senior Minister at Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, GA.  Rev. Johnson has written many books, including Catechizing Our Children, The Case for Traditional Protestantism, and Reformed Worship.  On this installment of Theology on the Go, Rev. Johnson talks with Jonathan about the worship of our Great God.

When Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment, he responds by quoting from Deuteronomy 6.[1]  Specifically, he quotes from the passage often called the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”[2] 

No doubt you have heard the expression “killing two birds with one stone.” The point of the cliché is that it expresses the desire to achieve two results with one act. It could be understood as a colloquial way of saying “work smarter, not harder.” Some years ago I learned the truth of this expression as I was endeavoring to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism for my licensure exam, one of the steps on the way toward ministerial ordination in Presbyterian and Reformed churches.

This week on Theology on the Go, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Rev. Terry Johnson, who is Senior Minister at Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, GA.  Rev. Johnson has written and edited many books, including Catechizing Our Children and The Case for Traditional Protestantism, and Reformed Worship.  On this installment of Theology on the Go, Rev. Johnson talks with Jonathan about the importance of catechizing our children.

For various reasons, the words “scholar” and “pastor” are not put together as they once were.  There was once a time when the minister was the most educated man in the community.  And there came with that a concern, and perhaps even an expectation, that his pulpit ministry would bear the characteristics of serious academic preparation. That is not to say that he turned the sanctuary into a systematic theology lecture hall.  But it is to say that his formal theological studies, including systematic theology, would be appropriately taught through his weekly expositions of Scripture.  So as he was teaching his congregation the Bible, he was also teaching them systematic theology in a way so as to sharpen the mind and warm the heart.  The congregation came to know not only what the passage meant and what their response to it should be; they also discovered something of how its themes fit with the rest of Scripture, and something of how the church has communicated and passed on a faithful summary of the Christian faith down through its history.

If you want to do something well, from running a company, to training for a marathon, to passing classes, keeping a house, raising kids, or cooking meals, it helps to have a system. Yet some of us have been told this our whole lives, and still resist doing things, “systematically”. We prefer to “go with the flow” and “see what happens”, perhaps in search of the illusory “carefree life”, or in hopes of staying flexible, so when “something better” comes along, we can step into it. However, that approach quickly becomes defeating to actually keeping jobs, passing classes, or generally living life to the fullest. You begin to find that time is wasted and that you’re not sure what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, or where your life is headed.

It is safe to assume whether you sit in a pew or stand in a pulpit, philosophical trends are trickling into minds all around you.  They drip, drip, drip into the intellectual habits of those you worship with, those who teach your children, and those who will eat turkey with you in November.  No one needs to read bad philosophy to be influenced by it. To borrow a phrase from Peter Berger, “cognitive contamination” happens every day in our ordinary work-a-day lives.  One philosophical trend trickling into western culture, first embraced by leftist academics 50 years ago, is postmodernism.

The salient portion of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling reads, “The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them” (22-23). In other words, and as you by now know, same sex marriage has become a civil right in the United States.  This raises a serious implication, namely, religious freedom is now in question.

With magisterial grace, the Bible weds Christian theology to the male/female distinctions in God’s creation of marriage. Space permits only a brief consideration of this mysterious and intricate knot.

Adam and Eve are one flesh, but they are not one person. Their union is vital and real, yet for that to be the case, their distinct identities endure. Adam is not Eve, and Eve is not Adam. This personal and gender distinction is a sine qua non of marriage itself.

Join me as we give some thought to a nagging perennial question in theological circles. What is the relation of philosophy to theology? Are these antithetical? Are they virtually identical? Or are they kissing cousins? The antithetical perspective is seen in the now proverbial query of the North African lawyer-turned-theologian Tertullian, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?  What concord is there between the Academy and the church?

This week on Theology on the Go, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. John Frame, J.D. Trimble Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL. Dr. Frame has written many books and taught extensively on philosophy for RTS and other schools. On this installment of Theology on the Go, Dr. Frame talks with Jonathan about philosophy and its significance for pastors and theologians.

My first experience at church planting was not easy. It was trying times to keep a small group meeting in a nursing home, a YWCA hall, and even an occasional hotel room! For a while, it seemed like we were vagabonds carrying boxes of Bibles and song books in and out of doors from one Sunday to the next.  But that really wasn’t the hard part. The hardest part was listening to those around me who had bought hook line and sinker into techniques that were sure to make the church grow. It was during those days that I read my first book by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It was the masterful work on preaching, which began as lectures delivered to the faculty and student body at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, later published and aptly titled, Preaching and Preachers.

Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949) is widely known as the father of orthodox Reformed confessional biblical theology. Also known as redemptive historical theology, biblical theology is concerned with the progressive unfolding of God’s revelation over time in history. Vos himself wrote several seminal books, articles, and dictionary entrees dealing with different aspects of the history of special revelation. Vos wrote a general introduction to biblical theology, a study of the teaching of Hebrews, a volume on the nature of Paul’s understanding of eschatology, and a fine book on the nature of the kingdom of God and the church.

Let me start with a quotation. It does not matter who said that. What he said matters:

Exegetical theology investigates biblical teaching as the basis of our talk about God. . . . dogmatics as such does not ask what the apostles and prophets said but what we must say on the basis of the apostles and prophets.

All philosophical and theological or doctrinal work revolves around definitions of terms and the concepts expressed by the use of those terms. Everyone, Christian or not, engages in theology, and has doctrine. This is because all humans are created in God’s image, make knowledge claims and live them out in God’s creation. If we can distinguish between theology and doctrine, that distinction is, to say the least, thin. Theology can be briefly defined in a Christian way as the study of the Triune God and the beliefs and actions that feed and result from this study.

As creatures made in God’s image (imago Dei), we finitely reflect the Triune God. We are not God, but his image bearers. We are not part of him, but made by him and for him. Absolutely distinct from him, we are in essential ways, like him. Different from yet derivative of him, we do not replace or equal him; rather as mirrors of him, we owe him faith, honor, and obedience. The blessed intricacy and inscrutability of this reflection of the Creator continues to fascinate.

The heart is undeniably the controlling faculty in our life. In biblical theology the heart—not the mind, nor the body—is depicted as control central of the human being. Study the Psalms sometime to see how the heart stands for the sum of the whole person.

It’s never going to end, you know—the construction on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Cranes will keep swinging, dump trucks dumping, drills drilling, backhoes clawing. By the time the roads are paved and painted, some other section will be weathered to disrepair, and the PENNDOT orchestra of metal and wheels will move downwind and begin another thoroughfare symphony. And we’ll be here . . . sitting in traffic.

In his classic book, The City of God, fourth century bishop, Aurelius Augustine, discusses a notable abuse of scripture in his day. He speaks of contemporaries who “allegorize all that concerns Paradise itself,” who teach “as if there could not be a real terrestrial Paradise!” (COG, 13.21).

This week on Theology on the Go, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. William VanDoodewaard, Professor of Church History at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dr. VanDoodewaard has contributed to and written several books, including his newest, The Quest for the Historical Adam: Genesis, Hermeneutics, and Human Origins. On this installment of Theology on the Go, Dr. VanDoodewaard stops by to talk with Jonathan about the historical Adam. Listen in as Jonathan and Bill discuss this very important and weighty topic!

If a worldview can be likened to a set of corrective lenses through which one sees life and the world around them, it’s not hard to imagine why a proper worldview is important. If your perception of the world is inaccurate, you struggle to find your way, get dizzy, and bump into things. Holding a “Christian worldview” means taking “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). It means Christ is your optometrist, and so your vision is clear. For example, we see Jesus operating as the great optometrist in passages like Mark 8:22-26.

The songbirds always manage to get up before I do, so by the time I start my morning run they have already been carrying on their lyrical dialogues, mostly the robins, but the song sparrows and Carolina wrens fill in the background. Their songs seem to be so thickly spun through the morning air that it feels as if I’m running through them. Their beauty envelopes me, as it does everyone else who wakes up later in the morning. They sing before an audience.

By now, Obergefell v. Hodges is household parlance.  The majority opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States reads, “The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them.”  Same-sex marriage is now a civil right.  Though not surprised when I heard the ruling on June 26^th, I did have a hollow feeling.  How did we arrive at this point in history?  How did we come to have this view of the world?

This great model prayer concludes by linking divine forgiveness and human forgiveness under the rubric of prayer. Even a first-time reader can observe Jesus teaching that those who are mighty in prayer necessarily know that God’s mercy is mighty.

Today Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. Andrew Hoffecker, Professor of Church History (Emeritus) at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. Dr. Hoffecker has written and edited many books, including a two-volume series on Christian worldview. He stops by to talk with Jonathan about that topic and how Christians can foster a biblically-centered worldview.

There seems to be a renewal of theological emphasis today on the historical view of creatio continua (continual creation), referred to by some theologians as the doctrine of providence. Providence is the triune God’s activity in preserving creatures and bringing about their fruitfulness and ongoing diversity. It is through God’s providence that he made creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing). The triune God’s unique work was to bringthe created universe, time, and space into existence from no preexistent material.

What is the difference between the providence of God and fate?  For some the difference is not easily discerned.  In fact, it may have been your unfortunate experience to have learned about fatalism while listening to someone lecture on God’s providence!    So, what is the real difference between two?  Well, it might be helpful to describe fatalism before trying to differentiate it from the providence of God.  So, how should we describe fatalism?  Well, we can say that it is the inevitable necessity of the falling out of events.  In other words, fate is a natural force which a person cannot change or resist.

Providence is the doctrine of Scripture that teaches us that God is still in control of the universe which He created. He still exercises authority over all of the creation and the unfolding of history within His creation is not haphazard but according to the plan and permission of God. Louis Berkhof defines providence as “that continued exercise of the divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all His creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end."

Jesus is Head of the Church. He is Head of his Church. This we believe. This we confess. And yet how quickly this we dismiss!

Honestly, how significantly does Jesus’ lordship over the Church shape our thinking, our lives, and our priorities? How seriously do we take his throne, his reign, and rule? What weight do we give his kingly session? Does my life align with the priorities Jesus has established in his reign in and over his Church?

There is no more vital subject for Jesus followers than prayer. Jesus provides instruction on giving and fasting (cf. Mt. 6: 2-4, 16-18), but he elaborates more fully on prayer. Keeping with his theme of avoiding showiness, Christ next tutors his disciples on what not to do (Mt. 6:7-8), followed by his instruction on what to do (cf. Mt. 6:9-15). The Lord’s Prayer has guided many generations, and it became a regular part of catechetical works and even systematic theologies. Some Puritans (Thomas Watson among them) view it as a grand summation of the gospel, or as a system or body of divinity in miniature.

Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621) was a well-known figure of the Counter-Reformation and was no mean theologian.  He was Pope Clement VIII’s personal theologian and in 1930 he was canonized and consequently named a Doctor of the Church.  Protestants often reflect on the Reformation as the time in which the doctrine of justification was once again restored to a Biblical foundation.  However, according to Bellarmine, the greatest error of Protestantism was not its doctrine of justification. 

So having first told his disciples how NOT to pray, Jesus also told them what to do; and now he moves on to give them a model or perfect example for prayer in Matthew 6:9-13. The parallel in Luke 11 reports that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11:2). His primer is found in these next verses.

John Owen, the seventeenth century English Puritan, wrote of an imagined reaction in heaven by the Son of God in response to the fall of Adam and Eve, and what he purposed to do in response:

The Bible represents God’s relationship to his human creation in terms of a two covenant structure (nicely summed up in the Westminster Confession of Faith 7.3,5, and 6). God created Adam and Eve within a covenant structure called the covenant of works in which God commanded our first parents to refrain from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:15-17). Implicit within the warning was a promise of confirmed blessed righteousness should Adam and Eve have obeyed God. Unfortunately as Genesis 3 reveals, Adam and Eve fell for the blandishments of Satan speaking through the serpent.

Think you can live without doctrine? Try that with prayer. Far from being an obstacle to godly living, doctrine helps. Specifically, when we pray we should be clear to WHOM we’re praying. For example, if you think of God as a syrupy and sentimental you might pray that your feelings be changed or charged.

The verses in Mt. 6:6-8 show us how Jesus instructed us NOT to pray. He said that we were not to pray seeking fame and admiration from others. He also cautioned us not to pray with vain repetition or saying the same meaningless phrases all the time. He warned us that if we pray like that then we’ll receive as our only reward the human all-star balloting for Most Valuable Prayer, but not the lasting approval of our Father. Jesus, our Lord, told us not to be hypocrites or play-actors in our prayers. We are not to love to be respected by others for our prayer ability, nor are we to be spectators impressed with our own piety.

Many Protestants avoid fasting, thinking it to be a vestige of Medieval asceticism that is somehow alien to Reformed piety.

The third example in this context concerns fasting that is not pretentious. A third time Jesus begins by denouncing the showy spirituality involved. In v. 16, he does not say fasting is wrong. He encourages it in v. 17. What is wrong is to wear a placard saying, “I’m humble; I’m fasting and suffering for God.”

The next example from the first Gospel that we’ll consider briefly concerns praying that is not presumptuous. The same principles hold for prayer as for almsgiving. All one needs to do to appreciate Our Lord’s wisdom in these verses is to attend a prayer meeting where the light shines on the pray-ers.

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”  But how does one know such a danger exists unless one already possesses an interest in, and respect for, people who lived and thought and wrote in the past?  And in order to avoid this historical pitfall, the assumption must exist that people in the past actually have things to say to us that we need to know, an assumption that may not be as accepted as it once was.  C.S. Lewis talked about the threat of “presentism,” the idea that our current time is the most developed and that therefore those who preceded us were somehow deficient.  To the extent that still exists today—and I suspect there is quite a bit of it—the resulting attitude is probably more along the lines of Henry Ford: “History is bunk.”

I was sinking fast.  It was my third year of church planting and I was having one of those “seminary didn’t prepare me for this!” moments.  If memory serves me, I was taking what felt like my last gulp of air when I came into contact with Gregory of Nazianzus.  For some that will be a familiar name.  He, along with Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, was one of the three Cappadocians.  No, they didn’t invent cappuccino!   These men were theologians.  In fact, Gregory of Nazianzus was given the title of “The Theologian” for a series of sermons he delivered titled, Five Orations on the Divinity of the Logos.

The pastor has many responsibilities in his ministerial life, it is difficult to try to suggest adding one more thing to a busy plate. In church ministry, it is often hard enough as a pastor to get people to read and study their Bibles let alone engage and enjoy church history. While I understand these difficulties, let me offer several encouragements to the benefits of bringing a little bit of church history back into your regular teaching ministry in the life of the church.

Jesus opposed ostentatious piety. Tell that to your friends and also to yourself. And he was not fooled by the counterfeit. In Matthew 6, he developed these important ideas.

At the memorial service of a dear friend of mine nearly 20 years ago, a sibling of the deceased stood up and affirmed his brother’s integrity. “Mark believed the gospel and he lived the gospel. What you saw in public, I saw in private. Mark did not lead two lives, but only one. He loved Christ Jesus and followed him with all his heart.” I knew Mark well. His brother was right. He was not perfect. But even his repentance evidenced this purifying love of his Savior.

I am preaching through Matthew’s gospel these days and glad to have the Alliance Column from David Hall, First Truths from the First Gospel for the journey.  I am currently in the Sermon on the Mount.  Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve laid eyes on this well-known and well-loved text and it certainly isn’t the first time I’ve taught through it.  But it is the first time that I have had the particular insight that I want to share with you.

Recently in our Theology on the Go podcast, Carl Truman was interviewed regarding the great Reformer Martin Luther. Luther is a towering man in church history with well known eccentricities. While I am by no means a church history scholar, I thought I would offer a few introductory thoughts regarding one of Martin Luther’s most notable works The Bondage of the Will in order to commend it to you as a book still worth reading.

Although Whitefield’s style moderated in the years after the height of his Great Awakening preaching, his basic Calvinist convictions did not change. In the late summer of 1762 Whitefield made his annual journey to Scotland, giving his departing sermon at Edinburgh on Aaron’s blessing to the children of Israel in Numbers 6. The published text of the sermon, “taken in short-hand from his mouth,” revealed that Whitefield had not muted his Calvinist convictions, though perhaps he emphasized them more before a friendly Scottish audience.

Befitting his far-flung travels and correspondence, Whitefield’s Reformed influences ranged widely. He sought out a wider Anglo-American Calvinist network in travel, correspondence, and reading. In a letter to Ralph Erskine, Whitefield noted that he “exceedingly” liked the Scottish Presbyterian minister Thomas Boston, especially Boston’s massive tome Human Nature in Its Four-Fold State (1720). The book had been “of much service” to his soul, Whitefield said.

Have you ever noticed how novelists describe the way a person walks to highlight his or her character? Proud men walk with their heads held high. Beautiful women glide or float. Evil villains slouch, sneak, creep, or swagger. The need to describe different ways of walking has enriched our language. The Oxford Thesaurus lists dozens of synonyms for walk: trek, shuffle, ramble, march, roam, wander, and others. But English is not the best of the worlds languages in this respect. According to Eugene A. Nida of the American Bible Society, the Zulu language has at least 120 words for walking: to walk pompously, to walk with a swagger, to walk crouched down as when hunting a wild animal, to walk in tight clothes, and so on.

Alan Jacobs, in his delightful little book entitled The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), challenges the notion that reading good literature improves a person’s character. He quotes the eighteenth-century scientist G.C. Lichtenberg who wrote, “A book is like a mirror: if a [donkey] looks in, you can’t expect an apostle to look out” (53).

On this episode of Theology on the Go, Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. Thomas Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Professor of Biblical Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Schreiner is the author of many books, including The Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law, and he and Jonathan discuss biblical law. Listen to their conversation to learn more about this topic!

It is expected that denominations whose lifeblood is constituted by one of the great historic confessions should subscribe to them. The Church of England subscribes to the Thirty-Nine Articles, Lutherans to the Book of Concord, Dutch Reformed Calvinists to the Three Forms of Unity, and Presbyterians to the Westminster Confession of Faith. There are some Baptists who adopt the London Confession of Faith as an accurate summary of biblical doctrine. Once this point has been conceded, however, questions arise. How strict or loose should subscription be to the confessions of the respective denominations?

I just put down Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity, and while I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it as an introduction to the history and development of the doctrine, there is one gripe I can’t seem to lay down. Throughout the nearly five hundred pages of discussion, he faults theologians for using trinitarian analogies that trend toward some form of heresy—usually modalism, tritheism, or subordinationism. Augustine’s psychological analogies, Multmann’s society of persons, and Irenaeus’ portrayal of the creator and his two hands (the Son and Spirit) fit into these categories respectively. Before I get into why this bothered me, let me preface the grievance with a memory.

The word “simple” can be used in several ways in the English language. If we say a person is “simple” or “simple-minded,” it is pejorative. As an insult it lowers them in comparison to other human beings. However, if we speak of a ‘simple machine,’ we are not speaking of a machine’s value but its composition. A lever is an example of a simple machine. There is no complex connection of parts and gears that make it work but a lever can be a very powerful useful machine. It is along these lines that theologians speak of the “simplicity” of God.

Brace yourself. I’m about to make quite a claim. Are you ready? What would you say if I told you that the doctrine of immutability, which Francis Turretin says is a proof for the doctrine of simplicity, helps us to understand the nature of God, which it most certainly does, but at least one New Testament writer employs it to demonstrate the stability and integrity of the Gospel itself? Grab your Bible, open it to Hebrews 13, and read it. I’ll wait.

We love lessons. As parents we wait for and even seek out teaching moments. But even more specifically, we love distilled instruction. We want the ideas boiled down. Give us three easy points and we are happy. You want proof for this mindset? Check out the endless series of books for Dummies and Idiots on virtually any subject. We want the facts and just the facts. Now, if you think I’m balking at the idea of lessons and teaching moments then you’re heading toward country I don’t plan to visit. But if these shoes aren’t made for walking in that direction, then to which road am I headed.

Because Christ is Lord of all, there is no one throughout the world who is not obligated to render to Jesus the glory that belongs to him as the crucified, risen, and ascended Savior and Judge. As Christians share the message of salvation, both near and far, the Lord uses their proclamation of the gospel to save sinners. In the wake of these conversions is worship of the triune God where it did not take place before.

In Isaiah 41:5-13 God was teaching Israel about their spiritual security by contrasting it with the insecurity of the idolater. Let me put it another way, idolaters are like orphans. They are fatherless and helpless. But the people of God having been adopted into the family of God enjoy a loving Father in whom they enjoy peace and security.

There are three basic approaches or schools of what is called “apologetics.” This word comes directly from the Greek, which has to do with the idea of giving a defense. So what is being talked about is how one goes about trying to defend the truth of the Christian faith. That there are three approaches, however, does not mean that everyone fits neatly into one of them. People do borrow from each; and while a person might prefer one school over another, it is not uncommon for such a person to grant the value, and even, at times, the necessity, of the others.

This week on Theology on the Go, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. K. Scott Oliphint, Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary and author of several books. Dr. Oliphint stops by to talk with Jonathan about apologetics. Listen in as Jonathan and Scott discuss this important topic! 

The two primary arguments against baptizing infants (paedobaptism) are: (1) there is no explicit Bible verse that shows us or teaches us to do so and (2) only true Christians are members of the new covenant and, therefore, infants—or any unbeliever—cannot be a member of the covenant community. Thus, the sign of the covenant, baptism, only pertains to believers. With these in mind, the following fifteen points seek to summarize the salient arguments for why many within the Reformed tradition baptize children of professing believers.

Theology becomes a dangerous weapon when its terms become rhetorical arrows with which to shoot adversaries instead of tools that are supposed to lend clarity to whatever topic is under discussion. Antinomianism is perhaps one of the most abused terms in theological discourse. It is meant to be a characterization of a theological position, but it often becomes a word employed to call in question one’s ethical or spiritual condition as well.

Try to think about what it must have been like to live before the fall. Of course that is impossible to do because all of our experience has been one of an acute sense of corruption, depravity, evil, and loss. We do not know anything else. We simply cannot relate to a world that is without these things, a world that is not filled with heartache, frustration, suffering, pain, hatred, turmoil, and disintegration. In a word, we have no idea what it is to live without the presence of sin.

When Adam stood in the Garden of Eden before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he was confronted with the absolute authority of God. The command from God could not have been more clear, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16b-17).

As Christians we worship the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the Nicene Creed the Son is very God of very God and is of the same substance as the Father. And the Spirit is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and Son. In the same creed we also confess that the Son was incarnate and was made man. That is, he took to himself our creaturely human nature. But this seems to present us with a theological difficulty.

When did you die?

Michael Allen Rogers wrote recently that he died in 1957, when he was just eight years old.[1] Personally, I’ve had several near-death experiences, but I didn’t really die until 2006, partway through my undergraduate studies. The experience was simply unparalleled. All I can say of it now is that the breaths I have taken since then have been of clean air, filtered by the very speech of God—and I am done with death.

When my wife and I moved into our house in the early spring, the two trees in the back yard were charming, their trunks splitting and winding like strands of hair, their leaves just beginning to bud. From what we could see, they added allure to the property, which was complemented by the rest of the quiet town. I had taken a few field environmental classes as a high school student, but I couldn’t identify what kind of trees they were.

According to Herman Bavinck, it is only the Christian faith that consistently maintains both God’s absoluteness and his intimate, personal nearness to creatures. All unbelieving philosophies inevitably pit one against the other. Pantheism, for instance, dissolves God’s transcendence and Deism annihilates his immanence. But in his revelation of himself God’s draws near to us as the one who is profoundly other than us: “eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in the finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing.”

In an age when “knowing” and “comprehending” are generally taken to be interchangeable concepts, to confess God as incomprehensible may seem odd. Yet such was nearly the universal confession of the Church prior to the Modern period.[1] Moreover, God’s incomprehensibility was not regarded as a liability, somehow stifling true worship of him, but as a truth about God to be embraced and adored.

2014 is sure to be greeted with numerous attempts to turn over a new leaf. Every year we hear the calls for New Year’s resolutions. Since we are clearing the slate, desiring to make a new start, it makes sense that we would set out our goals for the new year.

No truth today seems more self-evident in our culture than the fact that God is love. But this is not understood in its biblical setting where John immediately defines the nature of this love by saying that Christ was sent “to be the propitiation for our sins” (I Jn. 4:10). Our world today is relentlessly therapeutic whereas God’s is relentlessly moral. In our culture, people think that God is love because he is supposed to be there for them. If he is love, then it is his role to make them feel better about themselves. And if he is love, then he will give them stuff. Maybe a big lottery win.

In sanctification, it is God’s holiness that requires that we become separated from what is fallen in life and separated to God and his purposes. And yet this holiness works hand-in-glove with God’s love for love is the fulfilling of the law. However, these two sides to the character of God have not always been held together in Christian living. Some have focused more on the holiness part but, without love, this degenerates into a graceless legalism. Others have focused more on the love part. Love without holiness leads to antinomianism and, even worse, to old time liberalism.

Although not particularly popular, either in our present secular milieu or in bearing our present ecclesiological amnesia, I continue to believe that having, holding, and requiring a confession is good for us. In short, a confession is good for our health, even if it, at times, requires medicine that might not taste great at first. The alternative treatments often yield chaos, will-worship, self-promoting celebrity cults, confusion, methodolatry, or continual flux.

What the gospel does is to bring men and women who “did not know God” (I Cor. 1:21) into a saving knowledge in which they can declare that now they “have come to know God” (Gal. 4:9). They “know him who is from the beginning” (I. Jn. 2:13). The whole purpose of redemption is that we might know God, love him, and serve him. It is, as Packer put it, that we might become God-centered in our thoughts, God-fearing in our hearts.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, as founded by James M. Boice, was the successor organization to the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. The so-called “Battle for the Bible” was followed by the “Battle for the Gospel.”

Confessions are doctrinal summaries of the Bible’s teaching. They are written by the Church for the Church and the world. They are written for the world because churches with creeds and confessions are trying to be honest about themselves.