Reformata
As much as we enjoy posting here on Reformata, we haven’t been keeping up with it. Jeff and I have been working on developing the content at Castle Church and are going to continue focusing our efforts over there. Chris has really been busy as well and hasn’t posted anything new for quite some time. If you would like to keep up with what we’re writing and recording, please visit http://www.castlechurch.org or http://feedingonchrist.blogspot.com. Thanks for reading.
add to discussionJim Cassidy is writing a running daily report at the General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You can find the report at the OPC’s website.
add to discussionHere’s a handy tip for you: Machen’s middle name (his mother’s maiden name) is pronounced like “Gressam.” Not many people actually pronounce the name correctly, even at Westminster Theological Seminary.
add to discussionThe most recent episode of Christ the Center has been published over at Castle Church. The episode is a brief introduction to the theology of Karl Barth. Previous episodes have covered several interesting topics. Biblical Theology and the Westminster Standards The Spirituality of the Church Choosing a Commentary Building a Theological Library Part 1, Part 2 The New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament
add to discussionAs presuppositionalists, we should constantly seek to expose autonomous reasoning and argumentation. I recently listened to an interesting unveiling of autonomous thought on a Mars Hill audio journal. The speaker was talking about the various pro-life arguments and demonstrated how pro-life apologists typically appeal to autonomy. Often, the pro-life argument is presented as such: We need to stand up for the unborn child because they don’t have a voice of their own. We must protect them because no one asked them about taking their life. This reasoning fails within a proper Christi... [read more]
add to discussionThe latest episode of Christ the Center is available. The panel members give a brief introduction to the major issues and point listeners to a number of helpful publications on the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament.
add to discussionThe precise meaning of words is and has been extremely important in the life of the church. Throughout church history, orthodoxy has hinged on small changes in meaning from one term to the next. Perhaps one of the most significant examples of this phenomena was the development and usage of the terms used of the Trinity in the 4th century. The immediate context for the development of Trinitarian language began with Arius. Arius was a priest in Alexandria who taught that Jesus was not eternal and that there was a time in which he did not exist. According to Arius, Jesus created all things... [read more]
add to discussionIn his unpublished Reformed Textual Criticism,1 Moises Silva brings up an interesting point regarding the Van Tilian aversion to probabilistic methods and the discipline of textual criticism. One need not spend much time in order to uncover Van Til’s negativity toward probabilistic methods. He found no room for probability within the Christian epistemology. This leads the textual critic who has Van Tilian sympathies to question whether he needs to jettison one of his interests. The whole enterprise of textual criticism is based on mechanical methods designed to point out which text... [read more]
add to discussionBoethius was an interesting and important character of the ancient church, but surprisingly does not receive as much attention as other figures. Boethius, a Roman noble in the 6th century, wrote an extremely influential treatise on an Augustinian formulation1 of the Trinity which became the academic standard for the church of his day. Apparently, for anyone to be approved to a teaching post, they had to submit a commentary on Boethius’ treatise. Carl Trueman suggests2 Boethius “falls between two stools” since he lived between the traditional division of the ancient and... [read more]
add to discussionFurther, the notion of the law as specially imposed by God with a view to reward also points to the absurdity of seeing Christ as under law for his own sake: again, the hypostatic union itself was quite sufficient to make Christ’s human nature worthy of eternal life for itself. Here we see the obvious doctrinal intersection of the covenant of works and that of redemption in the context of Christology and mediation […] [A]s a representative human being, Christ must both fulfill the law positively on behalf of humanity because of Adam’s abject failure so to do, and he must... [read more]
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