Reformed Forum » Blog

The Creator/Creature Distinction

Camden Bucey — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:48:09 +0000

In this episode of Theology on the Go, we treat one of the most basic doctrines of Christianity: the Creator/creature distinction and its implications.

Listener Co-Host Show on Monday 12/21 at 8PM EST

Camden Bucey — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:15:29 +0000

It’s year-end time again and we’re producing two special shows to start off the new year. First, we will continue the tradition of publishing a “Best Of” show. I’m compiling clips into a single episode highlighting some of the best moments from 2009. But our second special episode will be a “Listener Co-Host” show. If you would like to participate, and you are available between 8PM and 9PM Eastern on Monday, December 21, please email your name and telephone number or Skype username to mail@reformedforum.org. We will call listeners during the show, and you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions, talk about theological issues or simply chat with the panel on Christ the Center.

Help with the Best of 2009 Show

Camden Bucey — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:27:29 +0000

Just as at the end of last year, I’ll be putting together a “Best of 2009″ show as the first Christ the Center episode of 2010. I’ll be sorting through all 60 or so hours of Christ the Center starting tomorrow and could really use your help. If you have a favorite moment from Christ the Center that occurred in the last year, please send me a note. It would be an immense help if you could link to the show page and tell me approximately what time [minutes:seconds] the clip starts (e.g. “episode 92 at 10:43 into the episode”).

Comment on this post, send an email to mail@reformedforum.org, call 440-97-FORUM or send a Tweet to @reformedforum. Thanks for listening and thanks for the help.

Preview of Christ the Center with Tim Keller

Camden Bucey — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:40:53 +0000

This is a short preview of the forthcoming Christ the Center episode 101 with Tim Keller. Dr. Keller joined the program to discuss his latest book Counterfeit Gods.

Support Reformed Forum this Christmas

Camden Bucey — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:25:55 +0000

As you work through your shopping list and purchase gifts for your loved ones this Christmas season, please consider supporting Reformed Forum. The Reformed Forum makes all of its content freely available for the benefit of the Church. We do this as a labor of love and out of a desire to see Reformed Christianity grow throughout the world.

We desire to expand our offerings in the New Year, and we need financial support for new equipment. One of our major goals is to begin producing regular video content in conjunction with our podcasts. We intend to broadcast live video of Christ the Center and many of our other programs in addition to providing downloadable content through iTunes and other video distributions.

Amount	Number of Gifts
$500	1
$250	2
$100	5
$50	8
$25	10
$10	20
$5	30

To attain this goal, we need to purchase a new multitrack mixer, several decent quality webcams, and components for a video-switching computer. We can purchase the necessary equipment for approximately $2,500. The chart to the left shows how this goal can be met by breaking the need down into various giving levels.

To expand our content and produce video, we need thirty people to donate five dollars, twenty people to donate ten dollars, ten to donate twenty-five dollars, and so on. A donation of any size would be greatly appreciated.

We are tremendously thankful for all the prayers and financial support we already receive. All donations go toward operating expenses (web hosting) and capital expenditures such as microphones, computer equipment, and hard drives. No one draws a salary.

If you would like to help Reformed Forum provide video content, please make a donation to help us purchase the necessary equipment. To make your gift, simply click the button below, or visit reformedforum.org/support. If you have any questions, please contact mail@reformedforum.org.

Blessings.

Ezra-Nehemiah Discussion Live on Christ the Center

Camden Bucey — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:08:53 +0000

Join us Wednesday, September 23 at 9PM Eastern live on Christ the Center as we discuss Ezra-Nehemiah and restoration prophecy with Matthew Patton. Matthew is a PhD student in OT at Wheaton Graduate School. Several people have requested we devote more time to topics in biblical studies and we couldn’t agree more. Here’s your chance to interact live.

As usual, we will be broadcasting the discussion at http://www.reformedforum.org/video. We will also be in the chat room for discussion before, during and after the episode. You can either join the chat through the widget on our live broadcast page or you can use any IRC client using irc.mibbit.com as the server and the #reformedforum room. If you won’t be able to join the chat, you may still submit questions by voicemail or SMS by calling 440-97-FORUM. We’ll attempt to address them on the program.

One September Ago…

Camden Bucey — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:00:10 +0000

Here’s a blast from the not-so-distant past. These were the top ten downloads for September 2008.

The Emerging Church and Cultural Captivity with Martin Downes
Preaching in an Electronic Age with Greg Reynolds
The Calvin Quincentenary with David W. Hall
The Defense of the Faith with K. Scott Oliphint
J. Gresham Machen with Darryl G. Hart

August 2009 Top 10

Camden Bucey — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:13:34 +0000

The top 10 downloaded episodes for August 2009 were as follows:

Truth and Error in the Church with Martin Downes
The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes with Thabiti Anyabwile
Foreign Missions and Special Office with Mark Bube and Doug Clawson
The Regulative Principle of Worship with Derek Thomas
The New Shape of World Christianity with Mark Noll and Darryl G. Hart
The Theology of Samuel Rutherford with Guy Richard
Presuppositional Apologetics and Southern Seminary (1859-2009)
The Importance of the Original Languages with Miles Van Pelt
Apologetics and Pastoral Ministry with David Robertson
Geerhardus Vos with Danny E. Olinger

Reformed Forum is Back

Camden Bucey — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:59:32 +0000

As many of you already know we experienced an extended outage over the weekend. Actually, it was more like a mandatory jubilee period. We had issues with the storage on our server and had to do an emergency upgrade. It’s quite ridiculous that it took us so long, but we’re finally back up and taking steps to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Our recent growth has been a tremendous blessing, but brings challenges like this one. We’re doing our best to continually and reliably provide reformed resources to our community. Thanks for your patience.

Top Episodes from 2008

Camden Bucey — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:00:19 +0000

We dug out some of our “greatest hits” from the archives. These are the top episodes published in 2008.

A Brief History of Trinitarian Thought with Carl Trueman
Van Til’s Trinitarian Theology with Lane Tipton
The Reformed Doctrine of Justification with John Fesko
Recovering the Reformed Confession with R. Scott Clark
Apologetics and Islam with James White
Calvin and the Development of Covenant Theology with Peter Lillback
Thomas Boston: Preacher of the Fourfold State with Phil Ryken
Deconstructing Evangelicalism with Darryl Hart
Cornelius Van Til: A Life with John Muether
The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century with J. Ligon Duncan

Live Book Talk

Camden Bucey — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:17:25 +0000

We’ll be hosting a live Reformed Media Review Monday, April 20 at 8PM Eastern. We’ll be asking the question “What books got you started in reformed theology?” You can listen live at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/28332 or call (724) 444-7444 (Call ID: 28332). We’ll be giving away a couple copies of the latest issue of the Confessional Presbyterian Journal to people who call in to the show. Join us for our first live episode!

Reading the Church Fathers

Camden Bucey — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:48:12 +0000

Michael Haykin shares a few thoughts about reading the church fathers.

Reformed Forum Wiki

Camden Bucey — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:13:17 +0000

We would like to begin offering transcripts of our podcast episodes, but unfortunately, transcripts are cost-prohibitive at this point. We hope to be able to begin offering transcripts of at least portions of our shows using our newly launched wiki. If you’re able, please consider helping out by visiting the wiki and transcribing a few minutes of an episode. You can also help out by adding bibliographic data, outlines and other helpful information for our shows. We would like to begin using the wiki to create our show notes and then copy them over to the regular website once the notes are filled out. If we can get several people to pitch in, we’ll be able to provide a much better set of notes and information for visitors to the site.

The Pentecostal Movement from 30,000 Feet

Camden Bucey — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:47:47 +0000

The Pentecostal Movement had two main roots: a Wesleyan and a non-Wesleyan root. In the Wesleyan tradition, Phoebe Palmer represents the movement well. She picked up on the doctrine of perfectionism – that it is possible to be freed from sin in this life. Palmer taught a “second blessing” which was an extraordinary work of the Spirit which would accomplish this perfection. Palmer was highly influential through various publications and had many opportunities to teach her perfectionism.

The other root is perhaps best illustrated in Dwight L. Moody. This root should be distinguished from the Phoebe Palmer brand of Pentecostalism since Moody did not see the Spirit as a second blessing and agent of perfectionism. Rather Moody saw the work of the Holy Spirit empowering him particularly for extraordinary evangelism. Moody did not seem to develop much of a distinct theology, but used his views of the Spirit’s work and moved forward in evangelistic work. This non-Wesleyan tradition did not emphasize baptism of the Holy Spirit but focused on the Spirit’s role in producing holy living. This was not perfectionism. Holy living was accomplished through sanctification which for this brand of Pentecostalism was best understood as an act of faith accomplished through the Spirit. The Moody style of Pentecostalism did not engender the perfectionist bent, but placed a premium on holy living in conjunction with evangelism.

William Boardman, another pillar of Pentecostalism, became influenced by this Pentecostal teaching and became involved in the Moody revivals in the Keswick perish of English. This Keswick movement (which is sometimes called the Higher Life movement) taught the second blessing/perfectionism doctrine and influenced many people. Charles Fox Parham was a teacher at a bible college, was one of these people. He taught that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was confirmed by the speaking of tongues. This teaching resulted in a large outbreak of tongues speaking on Azusa Street in Los Angeles – an event for which the LA Times picked up the story. The Times reported people speaking strange non-earthly languages and thus helped spread Pentecostalism by publicizing it.

It’s not too difficult to understand the growth of Pentecostalism. It was attractive to many because it was conservative, yet simple. It defended the inerrancy of the Bible, justification by faith, and the Trinity and therefore wasn’t too “scary” to the average church-goer. The Assemblies of God wrote these traditional beliefs into their statement of faith but they added what have become Pentecostal distinctives such as speaking in tongues as a confirmation of baptism of the Holy Spirit and premillennial eschatology.

A second wave of Pentecostalism which arose in the 1960s was concerned with the attendant signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit and a third wave incorporated much of what we consider the charismatic movement. John Wimber could be considered the father of the worship style found in many (if not most) American churches. Wimber was a music producer and following his conversion sought to incorporate contemporary music into the worship service. In some ways he was following the example of Aimee Semple McPherson. “Sister Aimee” as she was called was perhaps the first major figure to bring contemporary music to the church when she incorporated it into the services at her Angelus Temple (dedicated in 1923). Following her lead (perhaps unknowlingly) Wimber and the Vineyard Movement have had a huge impact on the worship services of Western Churches.

Today, the charismatic movement remains very preoccupied with the speaking of tongues. It has even stretched into non-Pentecostal spheres. Wayne Grudem in many ways has legitimated charismatic gifts for people holding to some reformed theology. John Piper, a Calvinistic baptist with covenantal leanings, has been very influnece by Grudem in this area. The Sovereign Grace Movement (CJ Mahaney, et al) is viewed by many as a reformed charismatic movement.

You can begin to see the strands of development and the complexities involved in understanding the Pentecostal Movement. It is a fascinating topic of study that helps us to understand much of what the Western Church has become. And according the Phillip Jenkins, the Pentecostal influence is not going to slow down anytime soon.

*As a matter of full-disclosure, this post is based on my notes from Jeff Jue’s Church in the Modern Age course taught at WTS.

Handling Bibliographies with Zotero

Camden Bucey — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:25:10 +0000

I’m a huge fan of Zotero since it’s an extremely useful tool for managing bibliographies and making research more efficient. I use the tool to handle all the bibliographies for Christ the Center and have included a downloadable bibliography for each show. Each site in the Reformed Forum network are integrated with Zotero as well so you will be able to quickly add our books and articles to your library. Zotero 1.5 beta has just been released and the following video is a helpful demonstration of just what it can do.

Is There a Priority of the Forensic in Historia Salutis?

Camden Bucey — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:17:22 +0000

Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. discusses the relationship of the forensic to the other elements of the work of Christ in accomplishing redemption for his people. This is an excerpt from Christ the Center episode 57.

Listener Survey

Camden Bucey — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:37:51 +0000

Please help us out by filling out this listener survey. This information will help us learn about our audience demographics, etc. It will be a big help.

Listener Co-Hosts

Live Blogging from the Calvin’s Legacy Conference

Camden Bucey — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:00:36 +0000

R. Scott Clark will be live blogging the Calvin’s Legacy conference. The blogging will start January 16th at 6PST/9EST. This should be a great conference, so stay tuned to the conference blog RSS feed.

The Reformed Forum Into 2009

Camden Bucey — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:03:05 +0000

We had a great 2008 here at the Reformed Forum. We started out as Castle Church and eventually shifted over to the less confusing “Reformed Forum.” We produced 50 episodes of Christ the Center throughout 2008. We started all the way back on January 25, 2008 and were able to publish a new episode every Friday morning without missing a week through the year. I must admit, it has been painful to listen to our first few episodes. The sound quality was bad and there were more than a fair share of “ums.” Listening to our more recent episodes still reminds me of our constant need of improvement, but it is still encouraging to see the progress we’ve made up to this point.

We had the privilege of speaking with many of today’s leading reformed theologians, but we are planning to make 2009 an even better year. One of the opportunities we’re exploring as we book guests for the first part of the year is having two guests on a program who are experts in the same field. At the Reformed Forum, we are looking forward to making edifying discussions available to the church.

2008 saw two episodes of our newest show The Reformed Media Review. This is our show dedicated to reformed book news and reviews of books and other related media. We are also working toward producing additional programs. We want to continue serving the confessional Presbyterian section of the church in addition to broadly reformed believers. While we do not want to make our content broadly evangelical, we do want to broaden our audience in terms of theological familiarity. Christ the Center will remain a more “scholarly” discussion, but we are working on producing programs that will be more accessible to people who are new to reformed theology. We are also looking at a devotional-style program that listeners of all education levels will find edifying.

Thanks for listening throughout 2008. We’re looking forward to hearing from you in the new year and publishing more great material in 2009.

A Few New Books

Camden Bucey — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:38:34 +0000

You may be interested in a few new books that have hit the shelf.

John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine & Doxology edited by Burk Parsons
The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority
by Greg Beale
Concise Reformed Dogmatics by J. van Genderen and W. H. Velema
Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation: 1523-1552 edited by James T. Dennison, Jr.

For more information and discussion, listen to our new program: the Reformed Media Review.