PCRT Anthology: 40 Years of PCRT

Post tebebras lux. After darkness, light. This was the motto of the sixteenth century Reformation. The Dark Ages placed a bushel over the doctrines of grace, obscuring the Gospel itself by provoking reliance upon the Church’s ministrations for salvation, rather than upon the full sufficiency of the imputed righteousness of Christ as the meritorious ground of redemption.

 

The recovery of the Gospel with its elements of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone was the burst of divine glory that vanquished the darkness.

However, in the intervening years since the church recovered the solae, Protestant Christianity was subjected to the devastating unbelief of nineteenth century Liberalism that swept through Europe and America. The churches in Europe were left empty – changed to museums that marked the culture of a former era in contrast to what is now designated by historians as the Post-Christian Era, leaving the American Church crippled, divided, and almost entirely secularized.

 

It was against this backdrop that Dr. James Boice envisioned an effort to say “No!” to the encroaching darkness and “Yes!” to a recovery of biblical and historical Christianity. The first PCRT was held in 1974 with the stated purpose: To glorify God through a rediscovery of the Church’s great doctrinal foundations.

 

Forty years later, thousands of people have been encouraged in the Reformed faith, not only in Philadelphia but in cities across the country. Soli Deo gloria!