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Deism

Strictly, the term denotes a certain movement of rationalistic thought which was manifested chiefly in England from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century.

Affirmatively, deists hold to (1) the existence of a personal God, Creator and Rule of the universe; (2) the obligation of divine worship; (3) the obligation of ethical conduct; (4) the necessity of repentance from sins; (5) divine rewards and punishments, here, and in the life of the soul after death. These five points were stated by Lord Herbert Cherbury (1583-1648), called the father of deism.

Negatively, the deists generally denied any direct intervention in the natural order on the part of God. Though they professed faith in personal Providence, they denied the Trinity, the incarnation, the divine authority of the Bible, the atonement, miracles, any particular elect people such as Israel or the church, or any supernatural redemptive act in history."

 

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Deity of Christ

We believe that Jesus Christ, according to his divine nature, is the only Son of God -- eternally begotten, not made nor created, for then he would be a creature. He is one in essence with the Father; coeternal; the exact image of the person of the Father and the "reflection of his glory," being in all things like him. He is the Son of God not only from the time he assumed our nature but from all eternity, as the following testimonies teach us when they are taken together.

Moses says that God "created the world"; and John says that "all things were created by the Word," which he calls God. The apostle says that "God made the world by his Son." He also says that "God created all things by Jesus Christ." And so it must follow that he who is called God, the Word, the Son, and Jesus Christ already existed when all things were created by him. Therefore, the prophet Micah says that his origin is "from ancient times, from eternity." And the apostle says that he has "neither beginning of days nor end of life." So then, he is the true eternal God, the Almighty, whom we invoke, worship, and serve.

 

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Discipleship of the Reformation

The Reformation brought an incisive change in the understanding of discipleship. With his thesis of justification by faith and grace alone (sola fide, sola gratia), M. Luther {1483-1546) radically challenged the idea that the state of alienation from God that resulted from original sin could be removed by meritorious works. Hence he viewed the types of discipleship by imitation as well-meaning but needlessly self-torturing attempts at self-justification. According to Luther, imitation does not make sons, but sonship makes imitators.

For Luther, focusing on the cross of Christ is ecclesiologically relevant and allows him to lump together Jews, enthusiasts, papists, Turks, and heretics as people who all try to set their own meritorious works in opposition to the grace of God. Freed from the need to justify themselves, the Reformers (including also J. Calvin and U. Zwingli) could give concrete form to discipleship in every personal and social relation.

 

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Doctrine

Historical Protestantism maintains that the doctrinal truths embodied in dogmas are either contained explicitly in Scripture, or are deduced from it by "good and necessary consequence." Dogmas are not mere repetitions of Scripture statements, but careful, albeit human and therefore fallible, formulations of doctrines contained in the Word of God.

The Christian consciousness not only appropriates the truth, but also feels an irrepressible urge to reproduce it and to see it in its grand unity. While the intellect gives guidance and direction to this reflection, it is not purely an intellectual activity, but one that is moral and emotional as well. The understanding, the will, the affections, in short, the whole person, is brought into play. All the faculties of his soul and all the movements of his inner life contribute to the final result. Broader still, it is not merely the individual Christian, but rather the Church of God as a whole, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that is the subject of this reflective activity.

 

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Doxology

The utterance of praise to God; thanksgiving.

The best-known doxologies of the Christian church are Gloria in excelsis, or the greater doxology; Gloria Patri, or the lesser doxology; and the closing stanza of Thomas Ken's morning and evening hymns, beginning, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” sung to the tune "Old Hundredth" from the Genevan Psalter but also to "Duke Street", by John Hatton and "The Eighth Tune" by Thomas Tallis.

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Doxology is the offering of worship to God in "wonder, love, and praise", exalting him, glorifying him and proclaiming his greatness in "humble adoration"... Theology can make no real progress without the spirit of worship. Doctrine and doxology belong together. Worship divorced from sound doctrine degenerates into superficial emotionalism. Doctrine divorced from true worship lapses into barren intellectualism.

 

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Election

That eternal act of God whereby He, in His sovereign good pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of people to be the recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation in and by Jesus Christ.

The fact that God chooses some and passes by others does not warrant the charge that He is guilty of injustice. If God owed the forgiveness of sin and eternal life to all men, it would be an injustice if He saved only a limited number of them. But the sinner has absolutely no right or claim on the blessings which flow from divine election. As a matter of fact, he has forfeited these blessings. We must admit that God would have been perfectly just if He had not saved any (Mt. 20:14,15; Rom.9:14,15).

Because our election is "in Christ," we should not search for it in ourselves. Those who cling to Christ can be assured that they are among God's elect people.

 

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The Enlightenment

The complex cultural movement of 18th-century Europe. The relationship of the Enlightenment to religion has been widely misrepresented, largely by a failure to admit fully its claims to distance from the Christian world. It was essentially the use of powerful new ideas to influence a social situation, to reconstruct an entire culture, to provide intellectual justification for the practical efforts of practical men. Yet the lumières, as they called themselves, were hardly practical; nor were most of them influential men of affairs. Hume and Gibbon in Britain, Lessing and Kant in Germany, and the host of philosophers - Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot, d'Alembert, and the rest - mounted an attack that undermined effectively both an obsolete socio-political order and the religious attachments by which the old regime sought to preserve itself and clothe itself with sacred authority. C.L. Becker's thesis that Enlightenment was a derivative, vulgarized statement of traditional Christian values, a secularized faith, hope, and charity, is largely discredited as a distortion. Religion, which meant Christianity, was essentially and radically challenged by a vigorous, hostile secularism. Cassirer is surely mistaken in describing Enlightenment as fundamentally religious.

 

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Emergent Thinking

A simple diagram can illustrate what we mean by emergent thinking. Think of a cross section of a tree. Each ring represents not a replacement of the previous rings, not a rejection of them, but an embracing of them, a comprising of them, and inclusion of them in something bigger. The tree's previous growth is integrated into, and in fact is essential to, the tree's continuing growth and strength. (315)

There are many kinds of thinking. Some thought is discursive, tracing the development of an idea in a linear way. Some is polemical, staging a winner-takes-all fight between ideas. Some is analytical, breaking down complex wholes into simple parts or tracing complex effects back to simpler causes. But some thought seeks to embrace what has come before -- like a new ring on a tree -- in something bigger. This is emergent (or integral, or integrative) thinking. (316)

Emergent Christians look at the world as "our Father's world." We stand wide-eyed, trying to take in what's going on here, understanding it as an unfolding story, an emergent family drama, with birth, growth, struggle, maturity, death, and resurrection. We see God not as a potentate trying to keep serfs under control in the stasis of perpetual childhood, but rather as a parent inviting us to grow and mature, to become as good as beautiful and true as we can become -- to emerge... What we will be is not yet clear to us. (321-322)

...I believe there is something above and beyond the current alternatives of modern fundamentalism/absolutism and pluralistic relativism. I know this is so hard to envision...This "above and beyond" is, I believe, the way of Jesus, which is the way of love and the way of embrace. It integrates what has gone before so that something new can emerge. It is, again, what I believe Jesus means by "the kingdom of God," a reality into which we have been emerging through the centuries, which is bigger than whatever we generally mean by "Christianity" but at the same time is what generously orthodox Christianity is truly about

 

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Of the Eternal Deity of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ

We believe that Jesus Christ according to His divine nature is the only begotten Son of God, begotten from eternity, not made, nor created (for then He would be a creature), but co-essential and co-eternal with the Father, the very image of his substance and the effulgence of his glory, equal unto Him in all things. He is the Son of God, not only from the time that He assumed our nature but from all eternity, as these testimonies, when compared together, teach us. Moses says that God created the world; and St. John says that all things were made by that Word which he calls God. The apostle says that God made the world by His Son; likewise, that God created all things by Jesus Christ. Therefore it must needs follow that He who is called God, the Word, the Son, and Jesus Christ, did exist at that time when all things were created by Him. Therefore the prophet Micah says: His goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. And the apostle: He hath neither beginning of days nor end of life. He therefore is that true, eternal, and almighty God whom we invoke, worship, and serve.

 

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Exegesis vs. Eisegesis

Exegesis is an explanation. In the NT, therefore, exegesis is the explanation of a given text. Theologically, exegesis establishes the meaning of particular statements or passages. "...exegesis may be understood ... to be the practice of and the set of procedures for discovering the author's intended meaning." Thus, by yielding an understanding of the language, grammar, and syntax of a passage, exegesis provides a solid basis for exposition and application.

This means that exegesis must never deviate from confronting the text of Scripture to determine what it says and means. The historic Protestant principle of exegesis is that the text of Scripture has one sense, so that it is the job of the exegete to uncover what the writer meant when he wrote the passage under examination. Nowadays, it is popular to speak of meanings, plural.... Those who contend for multi-layered meanings effectively abandon exegesis and descend to eisegesis, "a reading into" the text of what the reader wishes it to mean. "This new system would have us understand a text not in terms of its syntactical or semantic structures, but in the variety of ways in which that text is "actualized" in our minds. To state it briefly, we are instructed that we should be reading ourselves as much as the text. Thus, all efforts to find the "real or single meaning" are considered fruitless for most modems, since in their view, texts generate a variety of meaning structures.

To deal honestly and reverently with Scripture we must adopt the historic Protestant emphasis on the intention of the writer of a Scripture passage. "What saith the Scriptures?" must be our watchword as we prepare to expound God's word.

 

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Expression Through Singing

We know by experience that singing has great force and vigor to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal. Care must always be taken that the song be neither light nor frivolous; but that it have weight and majesty (as St. Augustine says), and also, there is a great difference between music which one makes to entertain men at table and in their houses, and the Psalms which are sung in the Church in the presence of God and his angels. But when anyone wishes to judge correctly of the form which is here presented, we hope that it will be found holy and pure, seeing that it is simply directed to the edification of which we have spoken.

And yet the practice of singing may extend more widely; it is even in the homes and in the fields an incentive for us, as it were, an organ of praise to God, and to lift up our hearts to him, to console us by meditating upon his virtue, goodness, wisdom and justice: that which is more necessary than one can say. In the first place, it is not without cause that the Holy Spirit exhorts us so carefully throughout the Holy Scriptures to rejoice in God and that all our joy is there reduced to its true end, because he knows how much we are inclined to rejoice in vanity. As thus then our nature draws us and induces us to seek all means of foolish and vicious rejoicing; so, to the contrary, our Lord, to distract us and withdraw us from the temptations of the flesh and of the world, presents us all possible means in order to occupy us in that spiritual joy which he recommends to us so much.

 

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Faith

True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word, but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel, in my heart; that not only the others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits.

(The Heidelberg Catechism, Question 21, "What is true faith?")

The Reformers were unanimous and explicit in teaching that justifying faith does not justify by any meritorious or inherent efficacy of its own, but only as the instrument for receiving or laying hold on what God has provided in the merits of Christ. They regarded this faith primarily as a gift of God and only secondarily as an activity of man in dependence on God.

 

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Faith Alone

Q. Why do you say that by faith alone you are right with God?
A. It is not because of any value my faith has that God is pleased with me. Only Christ's satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness make my right with God. And I can receive this righteousness and make it mine in no other way than by faith alone.

Q. Why can't the good we do make us right with God, or at least help make us right with him?
A. Because the righteousness which can pass God's scrutiny must be entirely perfect and must in every way measure up to the divine law. Even the very best we do in this life is imperfect and stained with sin.

Q. It is by faith alone that we share in Christ and all his blessings: where then does that faith come from?
A. The Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it through our use of the sacraments.

 

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Finney on Revival

Finney's understanding of what a revival is:
A revival is not a miracle, nor dependant on a miracle, in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means--as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means.

 

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Free Will

The essence of free will is choosing according to our desires. The will is free to choose whatever it desires. With regard to salvation, the question then becomes, what do fallen human beings desire? Jonathan Edwards said that as fallen human beings we retain our "natural freedom" (the power to act according to our desires), but lose our "moral freedom" (the disposition, inclination, and desire of the soul for righteousness). In the Fall, we lost all desire for God. But because we can still choose according to our desires, we choose to sin and are accountable to the judgment of God. In this sense, the freedom of our will is a curse. All human beings desire to flee from God unless and until the Holy Spirit performs a work of regeneration. That regeneration changes our desires so that we will freely repent and be saved.

This understanding of human free will is not deterministic because determinism teaches that our actions are completely controlled by something external to us, making us do what we don't want to do. This is coercion and is opposed to freedom. How can our choices be determined but not coerced? Beause they are determined by something within -- by what we are and by what we desire. They are determined by ourselves. This is self-determination, which is the very essence of freedom.

 

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General Revelation

The general revelation of God is prior to His special revelation in point of time. It does not come to man in the form of verbal communications, but in the facts, the forces, and the laws of nature, in the constitution and operation of the human mind, and in the facts of experience and history. The Bible refers to it in such passages as Ps. 19:1, 2; Rom. 1:19, 20; 2:14, 15.

While Pelagians, Rationalists, and Deists regard this revelation as adequate for our present needs, Roman Catholics and Protestants are agreed that it is not sufficient. It was obscured by the blight of sin resting on God's beautiful creation. The handwriting of the Creator was not entirely erased, but became hazy and indistinct. It does not now convey any fully reliable knowledge of God and spiritual things, and therefore does not furnish us a trustworthy foundation on which we can build for our eternal future. The present religious confusion of those who would base their religion on a purely natural basis clearly proves its insufficiency. It does not even afford an adequate basis for religion in general, much less for true religion. Even gentile nations appeal to some supposed special revelation. And, finally, it utterly fails to meet the spiritual needs of sinners. While it conveys some knowledge of the goodness, the wisdom, and the power of God, it conveys no knowledge whatever of Christ as the only way of salvation.

This does not mean, however, that general revelation has no value at all. It accounts for the true elements that are still found in heathen religions. Due to this revelation gentiles feel themselves to be the offspring of God (Acts 17:28), seek after God if haply they might find Him (Acts 17:27), see in nature God's everlasting power and divinity (Rom. 1:19, 20), and do by nature the things of the law (Rom. 2:14). Though they live in the darkness of sin and ignorance, and pervert the truth of God, they still share in the illumination of the Word (Jn 1:9), and in the general operations of the Holy Spirit (Gen. 6:3). Moreover, the general revelation of God also forms the background for His special revelation. The latter could not be fully understood without the former. Science and history do not fail to illumine the pages of the Bible

 

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The Global Soul

The Global Soul may see so many sides of every question that he never settles on a firm conviction. He may grow so used to giving back a different self depending on his environment that he loses sight of who he is when nobody is around. Everywhere is made up of everywhere else, and our very souls have been put into circulation. Yet even global beings need a home. We live in an anthology of generic spaces: the shopping mall, the food court, the hotel lobby, which bear the same relation to life, perhaps, that Musak does to music. The global soul is a ventriloquist, an impersonator for an undercover agent. The question that most haunts him is, "Who are you today?"

 

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Gnosticism

Refers to secret doctrines and practices of mysticism whereby a person may come to enlightenment or realization that he or she is of the same essence as God or the Absolute. The Greek word gnosis means knowledge, though of a particular kind, namely the knowledge of one’s own divinity, acquired not by a rational exercise of the mind but by its very opposite, by mystical altered states of consciousness that seek to silence the mind. Knowing this, one is freed from the fragmentary and illusory material and intelligible world of the Creation and liberated from moral and physical control of Yahweh, the foolish Creator.

 

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The Goal of Apologetics

[As human beings] we have many objections, barriers, biases, acculturations, conditions, misconceptions, presuppositions, distortion of facts, and any number of excuses. It is the goal of Christian apologetics to remove these hindrances that stand between a person and the cross of Christ. As a result, some Christians see apologetics as pre-evangelism; it is not the gospel, but it prepares the soil for the gospel.... Whatever its relation to the gospel, apologetics is an extremely important enterprise that can profoundly impact unbelievers and be used as the tool that clears the way to faith in Jesus Christ.

 

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Good Works

1. Good works are only such as God hath commanded in His holy Word, and not such as, without the warrant thereof, are devised by men, out of blind zeal, or upon any pretence of good intention.

2. These good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life.

3. Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in them to will, and to do, of His good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.

 

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The Gospel Message

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
(Genesis 3:15)

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
(Romans 3:21-26)

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
(Romans 8:1-4)

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
(1 Corinthians 15:3-6)

 

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The Grace and Mercy of God

The Grace of God
In the specific language of Scripture the grace of God is the unmerited love of God toward those who have forfeited it, and are by nature under a judgment of condemnation. It is the source of all the spiritual blessings that are bestowed upon unworthy sinners, Ephesians 1:6-7; 2:7-9; Titus 2:11; 3:4-7

The Mercy of God
Another aspect of the love of God is his mercy or tender compassion. It is the love of God toward those who are in misery or distress, irrespective of their desires. It contemplates man as one who is bearing the consequences of sin, and is therefore in a pitiable condition. it is exercised only in harmony with the strictest justice of God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ.

 

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Heilsgeschichte

The term, a German word, literally meaning "salvation-history", was coined in the eighteenth century and used in the nineteenth century by certain theologians who rejected Schleiermacher's attempt to rest theology upon religious feeling and emphasized the primacy of the biblical historical revelation. One way that this term is used today is to insist that the total history of revelation and salvation is connected with real events in actual history, of which Christ is both the center and the culmination. From all the variety of the New Testament elements there emerges one picture of the Christ-event from pre-existence to parousia. This view does not make the Christian religion dependent upon the vicissitudes of historical research; it is faith in Christ which makes sense of the witness of the biblical records, and faith is essential to the right understanding of their historical content. The stress is upon the acts of God in history.

 

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Hell

Too often discussions of hell go beyond biblical description to alert people to avoid such a dreadful place. The problem here is that hell, rather than God, becomes the object of fear. Think of Jesus' sober warning: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28). Hell is not horrible because of alleged implements of torture or its temperature.

Whatever the exact nature of this everlasting judgment, it is horrible ultimately for one reason only: God is present. This sounds strange to those of us familiar with the definition of hell as "separation from God" and heaven as a place for those who have a "personal relationship with God." But Scripture nowhere speaks in these terms. Quite the contrary, if we read the Bible carefully we conclude that everyone, as a creature made in God's image, has a personal relationship with God. Therefore, God is, after the fall, either in the relationship of a judge or a father to his creatures. And God, who is present everywhere at all times, will be present forever in hell as the judge.

 

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Historical Formation of Dogmas

Christianity rests on historical facts which come to our knowledge through a revelation given and completed more than nineteen centuries ago. And the correct interpretation and understanding of these facts can only result from the continual prayers and meditation, from the study and struggles, of the Church of all ages. No one Christian can ever hope to succeed in assimilating and reproducing properly the whole content of the divine revelation Neither is one generation ever able to accomplish the task. The formation of dogmas is the task of the Church of all ages, a task which requires great spiritual energy on the part of successive generations. And history teaches us that, in spite of differences of opinion and protracted struggles, and even in spite of temporary retrogressions, the Church's insight into the truth gradually gained in clarity and profundity. One truth after another became, the center of attention, and was brought to ever greater development. And the historical Creeds of the Churches now embody in concentrated form the best results of the reflection and study of past centuries. It is at once the duty and the privilege of the Church of our day to enter into that heritage of bygone years, and to continue to build on the foundation that was laid.

 

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History and Doctrine

From the beginning, the Christian gospel, as indeed the name "gospel" or "good news" implies, consisted in an account of something that had happened. And from the beginning, the meaning of the happening was set forth; and when the meaning of the happening was set forth, then there was Christian doctrine. "Christ died"-that is history; "Christ died for our sins"-that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluable union, there is no Christianity.

It is perfectly clear, then, that the first Christian missionaries did not simply come forward with an exhortation; they did not say: "Jesus of Nazareth lived a wonderful life of filial piety, and we call upon you our hearers to yield yourselves, as we have done, to the spell of that life." Certainly that is what modern historians would have expected the first Christian missionaries to say, but it must be recognized that as a matter of fact they said nothing of the kind.

...The great weapon with which the disciples of Jesus set out to conquer the world was not a mere comprehension of eternal principles; it was an historical message, an account of something that had recently happened; it was the message, "He is risen." The world was to be redeemed by the proclamation of this event. And with the event went the meaning of the event; and the setting forth of the event with the meaning of the event was doctrine. These two elements are always combined in the Christian message. The narration of the facts is history, the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive church.

 

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How To Study the Bible

The study of the Bible must be done with the recognition that Jesus Christ, His life, death, and resurrection, is the key to the understanding of the whole Scripture. In Christ, God's redeeming love is preeminently revealed, the testimony to which is the heart of Scriptural revelation. This is to say that the Bible alone tells us about a God who loved the world so much that He determined to save it through His Son Jesus. We can learn much about God's power and greatness by studying the natural world around us because He made it and His glory is reflected in it. But God's grace, His saving mercy toward a lost world is revealed to us only in the Holy Scriptures. In fact, the knowledge of God as revealed in the Christ of the Scriptures is an absolute necessity for the understanding of God as revealed in the natural order.

 

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Humanity of the God Man

Q. 37. How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?
A. Christ the Son of God became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance, and born of her, yet without sin.

Q. 38. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God?
A. It was requisite that the mediator should be God, that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death; give worth and efficacy to his sufferings, obedience, and intercession; and to satisfy God's justice, procure his favor, purchase a peculiar people, give his Spirit to them, conquer all their enemies, and bring them to everlasting salvation.

Q. 39. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be man?
A. It was requisite that the mediator should be man, that he might advance our nature, perform obedience to the law, suffer and make intercession for us in our nature, have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities; that we might receive the adoption of sons, and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace.

Q. 40. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God and man in one person?
A. It was requisite that the mediator, who was to reconcile God and man, should himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us, and relied on by us, as the works of the whole person.

 

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Idolatry

From the Christian perspective idolatry may be defined as a worship of a god that man creates instead of worshipping the God who created man. Or it is being ultimately concerned with that which is not ultimate. In biblical times idolatry was associated with pagan religions and graven images. But through its history Christianity has recognized that man's idolatry takes more subtle forms. Thus John Wesley could say, 'We have set up our idols in our hearts; ... we worship ourselves, when we pay that honor to ourselves which is due to God alone. Therefore, all pride is idolatry.

 

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Imputation

Simply, to credit or reckon. Through Adam, the guilt of sin is imputed to all men; through Christ, righteousness is imputed to believers (Rom 5:12-21). On the cross, Christ exchanged his righteousness for man's sinfulness (2 Cor 5:21) by means of imputation. The sins of believers were imputed (credited) to Christ on the cross, and the righteousness that belonged to Jesus Christ was imputed (credited) to believers. Thus, believers possess an "alien" righteousness and can stand before a righteous God.

 

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Of the Incarnation of the Son of God

We confess, therefore, that God has fulfilled the promise which He made to the fathers by the mouth of His holy prophets, when He sent into the world, at the time appointed by Him, His own only-begotten and eternal Son, who took upon Him the form of a servant and became like unto man, really assuming the true human nature with all its infirmaties, sin excepted; being conceived in the womb of the blessed virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit without the means of man; and did not only assume human nature as to the body, but also a true human soul, that He might be a real man. For since the soul was lost as well as the body, it was necessary that He should take both upon Him, to save both.

Therefore we confess (in opposition to the heresy of the Anabaptists, who deny that Christ assumed human flesh of His mother) that Christ partook of the flesh and blood of the children; that He is a fruit of the loins of David after the flesh; born of the seed of David according to the flesh; a fruit of the womb of Mary; born of a woman; a branch of David; a shoot of the root of Jesse; sprung from the tribe of Judah; descended from the Jews according to the flesh; of the seed of Abraham; since he took on him the seed of Abraham, and was made like unto his brethren in all things, sin excepted; so that in truth He is our Immanuel, that is to say, God with us.

 

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Indicative vs. Imperative

Indicative: The mood of Greek verbs that presents the verbal idea as being actual or real, as opposed to that which is only possible or intended.

Imperative: The mood of Greek verbs that normally expresses a command or some similar declaration of volition. The one giving the command speaks to something that is in the realm of the possible and makes it known that he or she wants this to be actualized.

 

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Islam

Islam is a major world religion founded by Muhammad in Arabia in the early 7th century AD.

The Arabic word islam means "submission"-specifically, submission to the will of the one God, called Allah in Arabic. Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion, and its adherents, called Muslims, regard the Prophet Muhammad as the last and most perfect of God's messengers, who include Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and others. The sacred scripture of Islam is the Qur'an, which contains God's revelations to Muhammad. The sayings and deeds of the Prophet recounted in the sunna are also an important source of belief and practice in Islam. The religious obligations of all Muslims are summed up in the Five Pillars of Islam, which include belief in God and his Prophet and obligations of prayer, charity, pilgrimage, and fasting. The fundamental concept in Islam is the Shari'ah, or Law, which embraces the total way of life commanded by God. Observant Muslims pray five times a day and join in community worship on Fridays at the mosque, where worship is led by an imam. Every believer is required to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest city, at least once in a lifetime, barring poverty or physical incapacity. Muslims are enjoined to defend Islam against unbelievers through jihad.

 

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Israel in the Mosaic Period

After the exodus the people of Israel were not only organized into a nation, but were also constituted the Church of God. They were enriched with institutions in which not only family devotion or tribal faith but the religion of the nation could find expression. The Church did not yet obtain an independent organization, but had its institutional existence in the national life of Israel. The particular form which it assumed was that of a Church-State. We cannot say that the two coalesced altogether. There were separate civil and religious functionaries and institutions within the bounds of the nation. But at the same time the whole nation constituted the Church; and the Church was limited to the one nation of Israel, though foreigners could enter it by being incorporated into the nation. In this period there was a marked and greater clearness in the apprehension of the truth. The worship of God was regulated down to the minutest details, was largely ritual and ceremonial, and was centered in one central sanctuary.

 

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The Jesus Seminar

"Those whom God effectually calls He also freely justifies, not by infusing righteousness "A small, self-selected association of academics who meet twice a year to debate the Historical Jesus"... It champions a mission of debunking the perception fostered in the Gospels and many churches that Jesus was not only human but also a divine figure who brought salvation and will one day rule all things as sovereign Lord. It has marketed its views skillfully and attracted widespread media interest in its proceedings.

The Seminar's distinctive feature is its wholesale commitment to seven "pillar" assumptions about the Gospels and Jesus. Zeal for these assumptions, most of them disputed by other scholars, casts doubt on its claims to scholarly probity. These are: (1) the "historical" Jesus is not the "Christ" confessed by the church; (2) the Jesus of John's Gospel is almost completely fictitious; (3) Matthew and Luke are largely derived from Mark; (4) more important than Mark to Matthew and Luke was a hypothetical document called Q (consisting of about 225 verses common to Matthew and Luke and absent from Mark); (5) Jesus was not an eschatological visionary with respect to either some "second coming" on his part or some cataclysmic divine intervention by God to end the present age and inaugurate the final one; (6) Jesus must be considered within an "oral culture" context, claimed to be quite different from a written culture; and (7) the Gospels' are false in matters of history unless they can beshown to the modern skeptic's satisfaction to be true.

The Seminar's procedure has been to vote on the likelihood of Jesus' sayings using colored beads. They are extending the same method to his deeds. Their findings (not surprisingly, given the "pillars" on which their observations rest) is that Jesus said and did little of what the Gospels report.

 

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Justification

"Those whom God effectually calls He also freely justifies, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting them as righteous, not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone. They are not justified because God reckons as their righteousness either their faith, their believing, or any other act of evangelical obedience. They are justified wholly and solely because God imputes to them Christ's righteousness. He imputes to them Christ's active obedience to the whole law and His passive obedience in death. They receive Christ's righteousness by faith, and rest on Him. They do not possess or produce this faith themselves, it is the gift of God."

 

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The Keys of the Kingdom

83 Q. What are the keys of the kingdom?
A. The preaching of the holy gospel and Christian discipline toward repentance. Both preaching and discipline open the kingdom of heaven to believers and close it to unbelievers.

84 Q. How does preaching the gospel open and close the kingdom of heaven?
A. According to the command of Christ: The kingdom of heaven is opened by proclaiming and publicly declaring to each and every believer that, as often as he accepts the gospel promise in true faith, God, because of what Christ has done, truly forgives all his sins. The kingdom of heaven is closed, however, by proclaiming and publicly declaring to unbelievers and hypocrites that, as long as they do not repent, the anger of God and eternal condemnation rest on them. God's judgment, both in this life and in the life to come, is based on this gospel testimony.

85 Q. How is the kingdom of heaven closed and opened by Christian discipline?
A. According to the command of Christ: If anyone, though called a Christian, professes unchristian teachings or lives an unchristian life, if after repeated brotherly counsel, he refuses to abandon his errors and wickedness, and, if after being reported to the church, that is, to its officers, he fails to respond also to their admonition—such a one the officers exclude from the Christian fellowship by withholding the sacraments from him, and God himself excludes him from the kingdom of Christ. Such a person, when he promises and demonstrates genuine reform, is received again as a member of Christ and of his church.

 

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The Kingdom of God

The great future announced by Jesus is considered entirely from the standpoint of the divine kingship. And then it is not a question of a general timeless statement concerning God's power and reign, but especially of its redemptive-historical effectuation which will one day be witnessed.

Jesus has nevertheless spoken of the coming of the kingdom as a present reality. This does not mean--and this also is an established fact--that there is no room for the future of the kingdom… but it means that the one great kingdom of the future has become present. Its fundamentally eschatological character is maintained as a matter of course. It is the great kingdom, the coming of God into the world for redemption and judgment. The future, as it were, penetrates into the present. The world of God's redemption, the great whole of his concluding and consummative works pushes its way into the present time of the world.

We shall continue to hold fast to the terminology of the gospel including fulfillment and consummation. These terms have the advantage of qualifying the presence of Jesus' coming and his work as well as the beginning of the great era of salvation, and, besides, they hold out the prospect of the definitive, final significance of the kingdom as something of the future.

 

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The Law

When Paul draws a contrast between the law and the gospel, he is thinking of this aspect of the law as the broken law of the covenant of works, which cannot justify, but can only condemn the sinner. From the law in this particular sense, both as a means for obtaining eternal life and as a condemning power, believers are set free in Christ, since he became a curse for them and met the demands of the covenant of works on their behalf. The law in this particular sense and the gospel of free grace are mutually exclusive.

There is another sense, however, in which the Christian is not free from the law. The law is the expression of man's natural obligations to his God. It is pure Antinomianism to maintain that Christ kept the law as a rule of life for his people, so that they need not worry about this anymore. The law lays claim, and justly so, on the entire life of man in all its aspects, including his relation to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel itself consists of promises and is no law; yet there is a demand of the law in connection with the gospel. The law not only demands that we accept the gospel and believe in Jesus Christ, but also that we lead a life of gratitude in harmony with its requirements.

 

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Law and Gospel

Now, in order that both doctrines, that of the Law and that of the Gospel, be not mingled and confounded with one another, and what belongs to the one may not be ascribed to the other, whereby the merit and benefits of Christ are easily obscured and the Gospel is again turned into a doctrine of the Law, as has occurred in the Papacy, and thus Christians are deprived of the true comfort which they have in the Gospel against the terrors of the Law, and the door is again opened in the Church of God to the Papacy, therefore the true and proper distinction between the Law and the Gospel must with all diligence be inculcated and preserved, and whatever gives occasion for confusion inter legem et evangelium (between the Law and the Gospel), that is, whereby the two doctrines, Law and Gospel, may be confounded and mingled into one doctrine, should be diligently prevented. It is, therefore, dangerous and wrong to convert the Gospel, properly so called, as distinguished from the Law, into a preaching of repentance or reproof [a preaching of repentance, reproving sin]. For otherwise, if understood in a general sense of the entire doctrine, also the Apology says several times that the Gospel is a preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Meanwhile, however, the Apology also shows that the Gospel is properly the promise of the forgiveness of sins and of justification through Christ, but that the Law is a doctrine which reproves sins and condemns.