Calling for a Return to the Doctrinal Ideals and Kingdom Ethics of the First Reformation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jTld1nmkq4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVz4okhdRU
Several weeks ago I caught Jordan Cooper's videos dealing with the Ethiopian Orthodox man and the Knechtle's over questions regarding the Early Church. The videos of the exchange went viral and have been the source of considerable discussion. It's been something of a boon to Orthodox and Catholic apologists at the Knechtle's were demonstrably incapable of defending their position.
Attending church this Sunday, I was struck once again by the different approaches and understandings as to what we're doing there, who are we, and why do we gather?
The reason the Southern Baptist Convention is still arguing about women preachers is because they won't address the fundamental issue. The vast majority of the conservatives have no problem with women teaching - which is to exercise authority. The arguments in the New Testament that forbid women office are tied to the question of authority and the role of women which is one of domesticity.
https://gospelreformation.net/dear-pastor-may-my-child-take-the-lords-supper/
Spinnenweber is to be commended as he covers all the bases and his treatment of the subject is fair. Unfortunately his conclusions are completely wrong.
Recently I was re-reading a book of essays on Klaas Schilder and on the question of Christ and Culture, NH Gootjes asks if the cultural mandate changed radically after the Fall? Psalm 8 show the opposite, he asserts. 'Man has been given dominion over the works of God's hands (v.6). Man can rule over God's creation as Joseph ruled over Egypt (Gen. 45:8, 26). The psalm reminds us of Genesis 1. Man still has the position in creation as he had in the beginning, sin notwithstanding.'*
https://www.crossway.org/articles/is-the-lords-supper-jesuss-actual-body-and-blood-1-corinthians/
On one level this article had moments in which it was a blessing to read. And yet another part of me wanted to crumple up the paper and throw it across the room.
We can agree that the Lord's Supper is not a repeated sacrifice as understood in the Roman Catholic Mass and while some of the Lutheran hair-splitting and insistence on ubiquity is not always helpful, Naselli's rendering of the Supper as merely symbolic does not account for the Scriptural data.
https://jacobrcrouch.wordpress.com/2024/11/01/train-your-kids-to-be-christians/
There is much that is positive in this article and I do not doubt Crouch's sincerity nor do I wish to simply cast his comments in a negative light. Rather I wish to utilize them and discuss some of the tensions and inconsistencies that exist within the Reformed and Evangelical communities.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/11/the-new-divide-in-global-anglicanism
This article interested me because it's connected to some of the recent issues I've touched on respecting Anglicanism and how the High Church tradition approaches doctrine and the question of authority.
Where to go to church? What is one to do in these troubling times? There are many articles written about this topic. Some are helpful, others less so. We could talk about the Reformers criteria regarding the preaching of the Word, administration of sacraments, and (to varying degrees) Church discipline. But these discussions aren't always helpful because on a practical level there are numerous entangling ecclesiastical questions especially regarding worship and polity.
https://evangelicalfocus.com/multimedia/video/24261/Dan_Strange:_Faith,_work_and_Culture_Wars
There's a lot packed into this 12-minute interview. If you have your eyes and ears open it's rather instructive. But first, consider the context.
I recently had a nice long chat with an Anglo-Catholic priest and we discussed the issue of authority and how their understanding differs from Rome and its Magisterium, from the models that seek to place Scripture, Reason, and Tradition on par, and Protestant understandings of Sola Scriptura.
Driving home from a rather High-Church Anglican service, I reflected on the many different understandings of worship and the relationship (if any) between our service and the celestial or heavenly realm.
This story received some press in rural Pennsylvania. It certainly caught my eye as I'm very familiar with the area, located near the Venango County airport and the small community of Franklin. And as expected the reporting is somewhat sketchy on the exact theology of these people. But in truth Christo-Trumpism, the growing hybrid religion (of Right-wing Trumpite extremism with elements of Christianity) is able to both defy and transcend traditional labels and categories. Whether Catholic or Charismatic, Confessional, Evangelical or something else, it doesn't matter all that much. The religion is (in the end) a form of hyper-nationalism with a mythology and messiah to accompany it. We've seen this sort of thing before - these monsters are born of collapsing societies.
Once
again this is a sad but increasingly common story. It's a case of not
only abuses but wrongly framed and absolutized doctrines and ethics
that are unable to function in light of the dynamics of Scripture and
in the real world. The end result is frustration and overreaction.
The non-sacral sect model views culture as something that is at best inevitably corrupt (and thus to some degree a thing indifferent), and at worst a subversive danger to the Kingdom. This must be juxtaposed with the sacral-institutional model that views culture as something to be mastered, shaped, and controlled. When I say 'indifferent', this is not to suggest that it can be used expansively or with abandon. On the contrary our interactions with it must be marked by caution and even cynicism - and yet without fear. Such wisdom and occasionalism prove difficult and thus many have (in the spirit of the Pharisees) erected the Legalist Wall as a means of protection - a move that is ultimately corrosive in that in addition to being unbiblical it has the tendency to shut down the spiritual faculties of discernment instead relying on a kind of checklist spirituality wed to a (fundamentally flawed) cultural narrative.
Over the past several years I've heard more than one statement or discussion regarding the question of the Church needing to function as an institution or fixture within society and not fall into the category of being a sect and it connotations of marginalisation, exclusivity, and even extremism. The acceleration and amplification of the culture wars and the perceived marginalisation of the Church has fueled this discussion.
Modern Christians lament the sixteenth century Copernican Shift which initiated the reformulation of not just cosmology but epistemology and more fundamental questions such as meaning, teleology, and to what extent truth can be ascertained. If man and the Earth he inhabits is not the centre of the universe, then just what does that say?
Confessionalists and Evangelicals, (the two dominate groups in my Judah- Southern Kingdom analogy) don’t quote their own prophets as do the Charismatics but they do rely on alternate word-authorities. Evangelicals frequently quote the Founding Fathers or the founding documents treating such words as inspired or the very least deutero-canonical.
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Over the years I have on occasion appealed to something I call the Northern Kingdom Analogy. The New Testament repeatedly reminds us that the Old Testament serves as an example. There were false prophets among them just as there will be among us. In Christ, we participated in the same events, and partake of the same spiritual meat and drink. The typology is relevant as well, and especially so when one understands Revelation provides a multi-faceted view of Church History cast in Old Testament forms and symbolism. Throughout the epistles, but especially in Jude and Revelation, there’s a direct analogy to Old Testament antecedents.
It's difficult to imagine anyone enjoying or benefitting from reading the linked piece on PCA membership. But there's something here that's noteworthy – something that reveals (at least in part) some of the deception and sleight-of-hand at work in Presbyterian membership constructs, and perhaps the bureaucratic mind.