While In Ireland Amy and I visited the Drogheda Catholic Church - Here is the carving on the altar of The Last Supper (with Mary Magdelene next to Jesus?!)

Understanding and Owning Christian Theology

Week 11 (Oct 16): The Lord’s Supper – Why It Matters

The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: The Lord’s Supper – Why It Matters 

Baptism = Covenant initiation/washing/union with Christ, once for all; Communion = Covenant continuance; ongoing participation with Christ and His body; weekly and for all the baptized.

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Tags: Bible Classes, Church, Communion, James Jordan, Paedo-Communion, Peter Leithart, Reformation Covenant Church, Sunday School, The Lord's Supper

Joshua Harris.com

My dear wife forwarded to me a link to an article (posted by Josh Harish, by Reb Bradley in the Virginia Home Educator Magazine ) that is getting a lot of well deserved attention, even by the likes of Doug Wilson and Nancy Wilson. In this article we are given a number of thought provoking cautions about homeschooling that ring very true in my experience, both in my own family and in my ministry. May God use this fine article to help us think deeply and biblically about our families!

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Tags: Education, Family, Homeschooling, Josh Harris, Reb Bradley

Understanding and Owning Christian Theology

Week 5 (Sept 4): The Fall of Man – Why it matters

The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: The Fall of Man – Why it matters

RCC Confessional Statement:

5. We believe that in Adam’s fall, we sinned all. We believe that all men are conceived in sin and in rebellion against God, suppressing His truth in unrighteousness. We believe that man is unable and unwilling to repent of his sin and turn to God, apart from the elective work of the Holy Ghost.

Anthropology – The Study of Man. We said last week that man was created in the image of God. What does that mean?

What do you think we mean when we talk about the Fall of Man? Genesis 3

• What was the original sin? Pride – to be as God

• Did the Devil make him/her do it? (Eve was deceived, not Adam) – Not a created flaw. Adam volunteered himself and posterity for service to Satan.

• What is the curse(s)?

o Death: To victory, work to live and rule, submit to fill.

o Was the earth cursed? Adam rebelled against God and nature is in rebellion (by God’s command) against man

o God uses the curses to restrain sin in mankind so that man can continue his work of dominion.

• What was God’s remedy? Salvation (next week) – not religion, per se. Relationship, covenant – union.

• Is Got the author of sin? Job 34:10; Dt. 32:4; James 1:13

The extent of the fall – all of man’s being? Just the will, not the mind? Total Depravity

What is sin? Rebellion – Ethical, broken relationship. Just ignorance? Sin implies a standard – above humanity.

Inherited and actual sin. Rom. 5:12-19; 1Cor. 15:21-22, 49; Rom. 3:23; 6:23

Covenantal view of sin: All men were represented in man; all men willfully sin.

In what sense is sin part of our nature?

If we are by nature sinners, how can we be held accountable?

Homosexuality – made that way?

Is sin a result of our environment? Yes and no.

Is temptation sin?

Rom. 1:18-25 All men know God, but in rebellion suppress the truth of God and worship/submit to creation – Satan.

Man is still in the image of God – and responsible to God. He is a twisted rebel.

Man’s calling – now impossible or just harder?

RCC Confessional Statement:

7. We believe that man was originally given a cultural mandate, and commanded to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. With the fall of man, the mandate was not removed, but made more difficult. So that by regeneration man is able to walk in obedience to this recalling, as empowered by the Holy Ghost.

Sin and wickedness and evil are not a substance – its not something that have in your as something alien. Rather – sin is rebellion

Can sinful people to good? Yes. God uses sinful men to do good in the world – despite men’s sinful intentions.

Can saved people sin? Are all men’s works sinful?

The Westminster Confession of Faith: Chapter VI

Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and the Punishment thereof

I. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptations of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.

II. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion, with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.

III. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.

IV. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.

V. This corruption of nature, during this life, does remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned, and mortified; yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.

VI. Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, does in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal.

Tags: Bible Classes, Image of God in man, Reformation Covenant Church, Sin, Sunday School, The Fall of Man

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in biblical and historical liturgical studies in Reformed circles. From a symposium sponsored by The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship James K.A. Smith gave this excellent presentation of a biblical motivation for worship.

Smith is the author of a recent book called Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies) that comes highly recommended to me, and is on my reading list.

Tags: Books, James K.A. Smith, worship

Understanding and Owning Christian Theology

Week 2 (Aug 13): The Triune God – Why it matters

This week’s young adult Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: The Triune God – Why it matters

“It is this Trinitarian confession that distinguishes the Christian religion from all pagan religions and philosophies and every cultic distortion of the Bible. No doctrine of the Christian faith is more important or more profound.” Smith, Trinity & Reality 

Beginning of our services RCC: “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”

Historical Importance to the Church: Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds

RCC Confessional Statement: “3.  We believe that God is one God, yet three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  We therefore believe in the equal ultimacy of the one and the many.”

1. There is one God (Dt. 6:4; 1 Sam. 2:2; 2 Kngs. 19:15; Is. 37:16; 44:8; Mk. 12:28-34; 1 Cor. 8:4-6; 1 Tim. 2:5; Jas. 2:19). That the Bible teaches this proposition is not disputed.

2. The Father is God (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 8:6; 15:24; 2 Cor. 1:3; Eph. 4:6; Phil 4:20). Again, this proposition is seldom disputed.

3. The Son is God. Because this proposition is frequently denied, I give a fuller statement of evidence, but still only scratches the surface.

a. The Son is called God (Jn. 1:1; 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Tit. 2:13; Heb. 1:8)
b. The Son is given divine names (Jn. 1:1, 18; Acts 5:31; 1 Cor. 2:8; Jas. 2:1; Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13)
c. The Son has divine attributes:

i. Eternity (Jn. 1:2; 8:58; 17:5; Rev. 1:8, 17; 22:13)

ii. Immutability (Heb. 1:11, 12; 13:8)

iii. Omnipresence (Jn. 3:13; Mt. 18:20; 28:20)

iv. Omniscience (Mt. 11:27; Jn. 2:23-25; 21:17; Rev. 2:23)

v. Omnipotence (Jn. 5:17; Heb. 1:3; Rev. 1:8; 11:17)

d. The Son does divine works:

i. Creation (Jn. 1:3, 10; Col. 1:16-17)

ii. Salvation (Acts 4:12; 2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 5:9)

iii. Judgment (Jn. 5:22; 2 Cor. 5:10; Mt. 25:31-32)

iv. The Son is worshipped as God (Jn. 5:22-23; 1 Cor. 1:2; Phil. 2:9-10; Heb. 1:6)

4. The Spirit is God. Those who accept the biblical evidence for the deity of the Son seldom have trouble understanding the evidence for the deity of the Spirit.

a. The Spirit is called God (Acts 5:3-4; 2 Cor. 3:17)

b. The Spirit is given divine names (Matt. 12:28)

c. The Spirit has divine attributes (1 Cor. 2:13-14; Gal. 5:22; 1 Tim. 4:1; Heb. 3:7; 9:14; 1 Jn. 5:6-7)

d. The Spirit does divine works (Jn. 6:33; 14:17, 26; 16:13; Acts 1:8; 2:17-18; 16:6; Rom. 8:26; 15:19; 1 Cor. 12:7-11).

e. The Spirit is worshipped as God (Mt. 12:32)

5. The Father, Son and Spirit are distinguishable persons in relationship with one another. They are not merely different names for the one God.

1. a. The Son prays to the Father (Jn. 11:41-42; Jn. 17; Mt. 26:39ff)
2. b. The Father Speaks to the Son (Jn. 12:27-28)
3. c. The Father, Son and Spirit – all three – appear together, but are clearly distinct from one another (Mt. 3:16-17)
4. d. The Father send the Son and the Spirit, and the Son send the Spirit (Jn. 3:17; 4:35; 5:30; 6:39; 14:26; 15:26; 16:7)
5. e. The Father and Son love one another (Jn. 3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 14:31; 15:9-10; 17:24)

Smith, Trinity & Reality

 Ontological & Economical

Perichoresis – Mutual Indwelling; God is by nature relational – loving/self-sacrificial

The One and the Many

The Trinity and the Three spheres of human life:

 Church

Family

State

Tags: Bible Classes, RCC, Reformation Covenant Church, Sunday School, Trinity