Come Share In Our Joy

Pasig Covenant Reformed Church's 4th Anniversary pictures.

See last year's anniversary greetings from Dr. R. Scott Clark and Dr. Michael Horton.

Westminster Wednesday: Trueman on a Much-Abused Phrase

Anti-confessionalists almost always have this phrase, "semper reformanda," ready on their lips. As a justifying smokescreen for almost every innovation in the area of church polity, worship, preaching, evangelism, etc., it really is anemic.

The thing that strikes me as funny is that so much of this has been going on for quite a while now that the impetus behind the movement has all but been negated. Wanting to shed the outmoded garb of "traditionalism," these trendy churches are now the norm, and people are finding out that it really does not deliver. Being different is now the "tradition," and like the man who built his house on sand, the inevitability of collapse is undeniable.

Carl Trueman reminds us that the church is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord" (Eph. 2:20, 21), thereby historic, catholic, and Reformed (ad fontes!).

All Trinitarian Baptism is Valid—Hence, the Invalidity of Anabaptism

Christian baptism is not a baptism into a denomination, group, etc., but a baptism into the Christian faith, as grounded upon the ontological Trinity. This speaks of the universality (catholicity) of the true Church of Christ, marked by its confession of the Trinity, and that baptism in any of the different denominations, groups, etc. that have this Trinitarian confession is a valid baptism, as it is a baptism into the Trinity. Hence, Anabaptism (rebaptism) is definitely error of an egregious sort, if not utterly sinful (as absurd as regrowing foreskin for recircumcision!).

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee explains:

What is Christianity?

That is a big question to ask, with every other religious sect claiming the label, and with enterprising entities claiming a lucrative niche market with products tagged as "Christian" this and "Christian" that.

J. Gresham Machen exhorts us to approach the question in a catholic frame of mind:

The Muller-Meister Asks, "Was Calvin a Calvinist?"

"Abstract: Answering the perennial question, 'Was Calvin a Calvinist?,' is a rather complicated matter, given that the question itself is grounded in a series of modern misconceptions concerning the relationship of the Reformation to post-Reformation orthodoxy. The lecture examines issues lurking behind the question and works through some ways of understanding the continuities, discontinuities, and developments that took place in Reformed thought on such topics as the divine decrees, predestination, and so-called limited atonement, with specific attention to the place of Calvin in the Reformed tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (Richard A. Muller).

Also available here

Targeting Tradition

In many, if not all, branches of "born-again" evangelicalism, tradition has gained a notorious reputation. The battle cry of the misinformed masses is "fallible!", and so they carry on, unmindful of the rich legacy of the past, while propagating their own traditions. Indeed, even as they rail against tradition, they pander their own twists on it, unwittingly falling prey to all sorts of errors that could have been avoided had the voice of catholicity been listened to.

Ned B. Stonehouse, in the 1957 Evangelical Theological Society presidential address entitled, The Infallibility of Scripture and Evangelical Progress, states:

"In insisting upon the distinction between Scripture and tradition and in pleading for greater consistency in working out the implications of this Protestant principle, I would not indeed suggest that we should despise tradition or in general minimize its historical significance. Tradition, in truth, is a factor of great significance within the history of special revelation itself. This is bound up especially with the fact that the special revelation of the Bible is a revelation in history. As such the truth of revelation is often presented as that which, on the one hand, is received and, on the other hand, is delivered over. To make this point more specifically it may now suffice to recall the words of Paul in I Corinthians 15:3, 'for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received'.

In addition to the tradition within Scripture there is the tradition beyond Scripture, the tradition of the church. And though this tradition is on a different level from that of which Paul has spoken, it remains true that for one who recognizes the providence of God, the kingship of Jesus Christ and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, historical tradition may oftentimes be of very great significance. To put the matter in a somewhat different way, it must be recognized that Scripture itself has made a profound impact upon the life and thinking of the church, and this is of course especially true as it has been accompanied by the operations of the Spirit in the hearts of men.

Nevertheless, the distinction between Scripture and tradition must prevent us from absolutizing tradition. No matter how high our estimate of the scriptural significance of any phase of history, including for example the Reformation, we may not make the judgments and practices of any such phase our startingpoint for our evaluations of truth or our standard concerning it.

In emphasizing this point as I do I am deeply concerned with a tendency which seems to me to be widely prevalent among evangelicals to obliterate or obscure this basic distinction."

If Not Calvin, Then Who? Yourself?

I found the picture above on FB, posted by an Arminian who started an FB group about refuting Calvinism (or something to that effect).

What the picture seems to be saying is that Calvin's massive theological contribution to the Body of Christ was, and is, a source of idolatry among its adherents. What this argument fails to realize is that: if not Calvin, then who?

No one approaches Scripture tabula rasa. No one can read and understand Scripture, at least as it should be read and understood, without the aid of the understanding of those who have gone before. This is not to say that Scripture is not perspicuous, it simply is a testament to the nature of knowledge. The relationship of induction and deduction in epistemology is perichoretic. One's understanding of fact must necessarily be based on an already-established conceptual system to which that fact belongs, and conceptual systems are established based on gathered facts.

In reality, what this picture is merely saying is that "I am the source of all valid knowledge; I am autonomous and, with me and my Bible, I'm ready to go places!" It actually implicates the self as both the subject and object of idolatry in its misdirected stab at Calvinism.

A Primer on Guido de Brès, Father of the Belgic Confession

After reading through his letter to his wife, and after having the fact of his faith that expressed itself in martyrdom hit home further, I now have a "man crush" on Guido de Brès.

Reproduced below is a brief biography:

The Love Letter of All Love Letters: Guido de Brès to His Wife

This year marks the 450th anniversary of the framing of the Belgic Confession. This historic church document is unique in that it is the only one of its kind written by a martyr—Guido de Brès.

Knowing of his impending martyrdom, de Brès wrote a letter to his wife that I can only describe as probably the best love letter that I've ever read: God-glorifying, God-dependent, full of faith and assurance, full of Scriptural truths, and expressing the kind of selfless love that a husband must have for his wife (in imitation of Christ's love for His Bride, the Church).

Bavinck on Truth and Catholicity

"Scripture is not designed so that we should parrot it but that as free children of God we should think his thoughts after him. But then all so-called presuppositionlessness and objectivity are impossible. So much study and reflection on the subject is bound up with it that no person can possibly do it alone. That takes centuries. To that end the church has been appointed and given the promise of the Spirit's guidance into all truth. Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e., from Christianity as a whole, from the history of dogma in its entirety, loses the truth of the Christian faith. That person becomes a branch that is torn from the tree and shrivels, an organ that is separated from the body and therefore doomed to die.... For just as the Son of God become truly human, so also God's thoughts, incorporated in Scripture, become flesh and blood in the human consciousness. Dogmatics is and ought to be divine thought totally entered into and absorbed in our human consciousness, freely and independently expressed in our language, in its essence the fruit of centuries, in its form contemporary." [1]

"It is not apart from the existing churches but through them that Christ prepares for himself a holy, catholic church. Nor is it apart from the different ecclesiastical dogmas but through them that the unity of the knowledge of God is prepared and realized. In the same way the dogmatician will best be able to work fruitfully for the purification and development of the religious life and the confession of his church.... This significance of the church for theology and dogmatics is grounded in the link that Christ himself forged between the two." [2]

Footnotes:
[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1, (John Bolt [ed.] & John Vriend [trans.]), (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 83.
[2] Ibid., 84.