Category: Evangelical Calvinist

The evangelical churches in North America, in particular, and in the West, in general, have largely been secularized. To say something has been secularized has broad affect. But primarily, I am wanting to emphasize how pagan Enlightenment categories have been uncritically swallowed by the churches. Whether that be to affirm climate change (as “creation care” or ecotheology), softness on Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Intersex (i.e., “gay Christians”) issues, critical theory and critical race theory, Liberation theology, and a whole host of other antisupranaturalistic Enlightenment categories and ideologies, the evangelical churches, by and large, have allowed themselves to be defined by. And if the culture,…

As I have been rereading TF Torrance’s The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons, I came across a passage that struck me as a sort of theological-exegetical gloss of Romans 8:31-39. Torrance is often accused of not doing any biblical-exegetical work; but I would counter, that in his role as a Christian Dogmatist his work is saturated in the thematics that allow Scripture to say what it does about God and His works. I would contend that, Torrance, as a Christian Dogmatist, par excellence, has Scriptural themes and their reality in Christ, pervading all of his writings. What is required…

Richard Sibbes (1577-1635), Puritan pastor and theologian has a few words on the sufficiency of Christ’s offering to the Father, and the trinitarian shape of the gospel: What a support to our faith is this, that God the Father, the party offended by our sins, is so well pleased with the work of redemption! And what a comfort is this, that seeing God’s love resteth on Christ, as well pleased in him, we may gather that he is as well pleased with us, if we be in Christ! For his love resteth in whole Christ, in Christ mystical, as well…

It is unfortunate that so many Christians in the West, and elsewhere, have so taken on the materialist/physicalist picture of the world, like in the way we process things on a daily basis, that we allow that to impinge, and thus reduce, or negate, the reality of the supranatural reality of all reality. I.e., that humanity, the world, the globe, the earth and the 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑚𝑜𝑠 itself, is created by the living God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As such, the rest of what Paul identifies as the 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑎 (as he gives that his christological twist) in the epistle…

Karl Barth, on his development of a human sexuality, rails against the malady and disobedience represented by any expression of a homosexuality; or any other deviances further downstream, as those also develop therefrom. The 21st century Barth world, ironically, is dominated by progressives and sociological liberals. Such postBarthians, in order to keep their status, mostly in the halls of the academy, must attempt to marginalize or altogether avoid Barth’s thinking on a human sexuality; particularly as he develops that in Church Dogmatics III/4 §54. In order, to provide a register of this Barthian development, since I have never seen anyone…

Being right about Jesus and the triune God isn’t like being right about a political platform or position. When we do our due diligence to be right about various and contingent political platforms and positions, we must make judgments, with the Lord’s help. But being right about Jesus isn’t ultimately based on our judgments and positions, per se. That is to say: to be right about who Jesus and the triune God are has nothing to do with us. When a person arrives at a saving knowledge of God in Christ it isn’t based on judgments and verity; it is…

There is an irony with Karl Barth, many, but one of them is that he is highly traditional in regard to human sexuality. This is ironic because the places, in the 21st century, that serve as harbingers and promoters of his theology, both Princeton Theological Seminary (and its Center for Barth Studies) and all of those with similar sensibilities, must distance themselves from Barth on these matters; that is, in order to stay politically and socially correct. But it is better to be biblically and christologically correct for my money. Here is a short snippet from Barth on this, with…

Charlie Kirk was just a guy, a highly motivated and gifted brother. He was constrained by the love of Christ. He saw himself as an emissary for Jesus Christ. And it was because of all of this that he died a Christian martyr’s death. He was too young, some would say (I would). And yet, the Lord has a story, has a ministry, a service for each one of us who are His own. Sometimes that story entails living a long life on this earth, eighty or ninety years, maybe. And other times, like my little brother, it only lasts…

How does God’s sovereignty work, in a God-world relation? First, to speak of God’s sovereignty can never be done so in abstraction from God’s cruciform life for the world in Jesus Christ. It is from within this unio mystica (‘mystical union’) of God and humanity, in the particularity of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, wherein God’s actions, where His power, His sovereignty and everything else must be thought. When we ponder the end for which God humiliated Himself in the Son for the world, we recognize that this ponderance goes back even before the foundations of the world; indeed,…

Charlie, died in Christ. Christ in Charlie was an aroma of life leading to life, for some, and for others, an aroma of death leading to death. It was the aroma of Christ perfusing through Charlie’s witness for his Lord that brought connection for all, through the Holy Spirit. People are longing deeply for the peace of Christ, the speech of Grace that perfumed Charlie’s interactions with others, and we collectively saw that taken away in a violent way. Charlie, was just living the Christian life in public, which is a uniting not a fracturing life. Rest in the peace…