Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
keeping watch above his own.
Yet upon that lonely scaffold
Is God’s imprimatur
So that the “villain” is the Prince
And the Prince — provocateur
And so History is written
so that God’s victory is secure
“Readers who do not assume that there is a distinctively “Christian” cultural-political task, or that the kingdom of God is the measure for all earthly kingdoms, or that the present social order is supposed to be transformed, or that Reformed Christianity is a Calvinism consisting of a “life-principle” or worldview, will probably come away having eaten much but not finally satisfied. The book that we still need is one that critically challenges rather than promotes the Kuyperian captivity of the church.”
~ David Van Drunen
If the Reformed Church is being stirred up by controversy it is being stirred up by the R2K club. This quote, which served as a kind of public commencement of R2k hostilities against Kuyperian theology dates back to at least to 2002. If there exists rancor in the Reformed Church it is rancor created by the innovation called R2K. R2K had an agenda to throw off basic Biblical Christianity in favor of this nouveau experiment in fashion designer “theology.”
So, don’t be fooled when you hear R2K champions like R. Scott Clark say things like, “”Carl Trueman has waded into the swamp that is the current discussion of transformationalismism.” No, what Carl Trueman waded into was the swamp that is R2K’s incessant attack on basic vanilla orthodox Christianity…. and he waded into it with both guns blazing in support of R2K.
You can hardly accuse the party who is merely defending themselves as being the aggressors.
Hat Tip — MVDM
Reformed Weltanschauung; The Biblical Doctrine Of Justification
The purpose of this course is to teach the student the Reformed doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. In the course of the study the student will be able to distinguish the difference between the Roman Catholic analytic view of Justification and the Reformed view of Justification. The student will also be able to identify how all non Reformed Protestant versions of Justification either partake of Roman Catholic understandings of Justification or, failing that, become littered with contradictions reflecting the confusion that arises when one tries to combine Roman Catholic understandings with Reformed understandings. The student will be able to explain why Luther said that Justification was the “Article by which the Church stands or falls.”
This course will not negate the necessity for the larger category of Systematic Theology. Such a course will be developed later.
Main Text: The Doctrine of Justification by James Buchanan
Required Reading:
1.) Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification by R. C. Sproul
2.) The Doctrine of Justification by Faith by John Owen
3.) Justification by Francis Turretin
4.) Justification by Faith Alone Jonathan Edwards
5.) Not What My Hands Have Done Paperback by Horatius Bonar / Charles Hodge
6.) By Faith Alone: Answering the Challenges to the Doctrine of Justification by Gary L. W. Johnson
7.) The Work of the Holy Spirit (Chapter 6) — Abraham Kuyper
8.)A Reformation Debate Paperback by John Calvin, Jacopo Sadoleto
Video
1.) What Still Divides Us? A Protestant & Roman Catholic Debate: Are the Scriptures Sufficient? Are We Justified By Faith Alone? (Video Series) — Appropriate sections pursuant to Justification
Online
1.) http://carm.org/council-trent-canons-justification
Assignments
1.) Read the main Text book and write chapter summaries.
2.) Read book # 1 — This is a intro / primer book on the subject. Write a 5 page paper on the essence of Justification by faith alone.
3.) Read the canons of the Council of Trent on Justification, book #8 and view the video debate. Write a 5 page paper on the essence of Justification according to Roman Catholic thinking. Write a 8-10 page paper on where Roman Catholicism and Reformed theology part ways.
4.) Read books 2-5. Write a 10 page paper comparing and contrasting the views of Bonar, Hodge, Owen, and Turretin. Concentrate especially on any areas you might find where you notice that they disagree.
5.) Read Kuyper on Eternal Justification. Write a 5 page paper giving your thoughts on Kuyper’s view on Eternal Justification
6.) Read book #6. After reading the book tool around on the internet and see if you can locate any Federal Visionists who toy with the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone. Locate their confusion.
7.) Interact 1 hour weekly with the Instructor regarding points of interest in the book that you are currently reading.
8.) Be prepared for pop quizzes or short essay requirements.
_________________
Were I to recommend books for the High Schooler from this list I would recommend the Sproul book followed by the Bonar / Hodge book as well as the video debate.
In discussions I’ve been privy to lately there is some contention that R2K, unlike Federal Vision, does no harm to the flock. As such, I thought I’d list 10 harmful effects of R2K upon God’s flock. In the end I think that R2K is every bit as harmful to the flock as Federal Vision.
1.) R2K teaches the flock to read God’s word in a dichotomous fashion with the result that the flock begins itself to think in a gnostic fashion as it approaches every issue with the question, “Does my behavior on this issue require me to behave as in the spiritual realm or as if I am in the common realm.”
2.) R2K teaches the flock personal and individual moral cowardice. The way it does so is by the flocks observing that their minister refuses to take a stand against the wickedness of this present wicked age simply because that wickedness is located in the common realm. If the minister refuses to take a stand the flock is likely going to follow suit. If the minister refuses to take up his cross and follow Jesus, why should the flock? the only courage the minister is showing is the courage to stand against those who insist he is a coward.
3.) By separating and dividing the common realm from the church realm R2K guarantees the flock will be harmed because the flock is guaranteed to live in a culture that is overtaken and animated by ideologies that are opposed to Christ. In living in such a culture the flock will find it increasingly difficult at every turn to live out their Christian lives in the calling wherein that God has called them.
4.) R2K harms the flock by playing word games so that meaning largely become relative to every individual. Take for example this gem from an R2K advocate that so wonderfully manifests these types of word games,
… there (is) a difference between politics and morality, such that while a political petition (circulated in Church on a Sunday) is inappropriate because it can deflect sheep and is a fault of the church, preaching the moral evil of abortion from the pulpit is appropriate and any offense that gives is the hearer’s problem.
Here we see that not only has politics been sundered from Theology, but also now in the R2K word games world, morality has been sundered from politics. Further, it is acceptable for morality from the pulpit to offend the hearer but it is not acceptable for morality in action (petition against abortion) to come to the fore.
If anybody has been following Matthew Tuininga’s blog on Jesus and the law one can easily note the many word games surrounding “Ten Commandments,” “Moral Law,” “Decalogue,” and the “Law of Christ.” One needs a venn diagram to keep track of the different ways Tuininga keeps shifting the meanings of words.
Such word games does serious damage to the language and has the effect of largely relativizing truth. This can be see in how within a week Tuininga goes from confusion on the law to writing a piece championing a well known Marxist.
5.) Because R2K abandons the Ten Commandments as God’s law word for today, R2K ends up supporting Humanist law for today. There is no neutrality. As the Ten Commandments recede from the public square as God’s standard, the public square become nasty, brutish, and ugly. This, of course, harms the flock.
6.) R2K harms the flock because it, or some version of it, owns, exceptions notwithstanding, the Reformed Seminaries, Denominations, and Pulpits in the West. In that ownership R2K, or its over the counter retail versions, are silencing the voices of Biblical Christians in the Reformed world. What those people did to Dr. Greg Bahnsen they are now doing to everyone who refuses to think dualistically.
7.) R2K damages the flock because it teaches abstractionism, allowing almost no concrete expression of Christianity in the public square.
8.) R2K damages the flock because it sneers at those very people (“Middle Class Chatterati”) who pay the way of those who embrace R2K.
9.) The militant amillennialism of R2K harms the flock of Christ because it predicts woe and despair and the impossibility of transformation and then turns around and guarantees that its predictions come to pass by not allowing the Theology of transformation to be preached in pulpits or taught in Seminaries. It bids the gelding be fruitful (demands transformation) but only after castrating the gelding. So, R2K creates the conditions of failure and then once failure finally arrives (as a result of self-fulfilling prophesy) it then points the finger at Biblical Christianity and taunts and mocks it for believing in transformation.
10.) R2K harms the flock because it is not Biblical. Anything taught as Biblical that is not Biblical cannot but harm the flock of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Bret,
My mother-in-law went to Sam’s Club yesterday to get some prescriptions. Her co-pay has gone up $30 for some prescriptions. She was flustered and asked the pharmacist what was going on. They had a long chat about the matter. From the pharmacist’s perspective, the co-pay difference was due to Obamacare. From his perspective, also, the govt, via Obamacare, is trying to “wipe out old people,” by increasing costs of prescriptions, by making some medications rare and unavailable, etc. He said that the effect this is having (as he sees it) on the elderly and the middle class is going to be huge.
What is your take on this?
Dear Kirsten,
I’d say your Mother-in-law’s Pharmacist is correct.
What is going on is that the FEDS have these HUGE entitlement obligations to Senior Citizens (Social Security) and to sick (Medicare / Medicaid). There is one of two ways you can get out of those obligations. You can either increase the money supply to fund the programs or you can decrease the recipients to make funding un-necessary.
Now the FEDS could bankrupt the country by raising taxes on younger generations. But that will inevitably lead to generational warfare as younger generations eventually refuse to impoverish themselves in order to enrich the generation or two ahead of them. At some point people realize that there is little use in working if the majority of your income is being taken. The FEDS could also just print more money but in the end that debases the currency and the purchasing power declines precipitously, with the same sure result of social unrest.
Or alternately, you can kill off the people who are the beneficiaries of the entitlement programs. I believe this is the route that the FEDS are taking.
Promises were made that could never be kept. The whole entitlement leveraging by the FEDS was a giant Ponzi scheme. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the voters who originally created Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid etc. are going to pay for “the greatest generations” sins in creating this monster. The Greatest Generation created the Monster and now their descendants are about to be eaten by the monster they created.
Obamacare has always been about killing people. The very title tells you that if you are familiar with how Government Euphemisms always work. Obamacare is not about health. Obamacare is about death management. It will very soon, once implemented, be deciding if the contribution of the ill to society is equal to the value of the procedure that the ill person needs to regain their health.
Plus of course Obamacare may be the final piece in totalitarian collectivist government. Now the State can control the cattle (people) it owns every step of the way. From Birth, to school (school to work programs), to the food we eat (The FEDS are in bed with the GMO Creators), to the medicines we take, to the media we imbibe. What Obama-care is, is the final piece in a “Brave New World” social order that the NWO has been working on for decades.
Some of us tried to warn people. But they were to busy with their bread and circuses.
Perhaps the worst part of all this is that the Church is largely asleep on these issues, or where it is not asleep, it is actively fighting for the NWO agenda. Really, we have come to the point where the visible Church is largely the problem.