Christ the Center

John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism

Jeffrey S. McDonald speaks about his book, John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America (Wipf & Stock, 2017). It is published in the Princeton Theological Monograph Series.

John Gerstner (1914–96) was a significant leader in the renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed evangelicalism in America during the second half of the twentieth century. Gerstner’s work as a church historian sought to shape evangelicalism, but also northern mainline Presbyterianism. He wrote, taught, lectured, debated, and preached widely.

Jeffrey S. McDonald is the pastor of Avery Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Nebraska and an Affiliate Professor of Church History at Sioux Falls Seminary, Omaha.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff McDonald, Jim Cassidy

Camden Bucey - June 21, 2019 - Modern Church - 4 Comments

Thinking through Creation

Christopher Watkin speaks about his book Thinking through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 as Tools of Cultural Critique. Watkin looks to the early chapters of Genesis for foundational doctrines about God, the world, and ourselves. In so doing, he advocates for a robust engagement with others about contemporary culture and ideas.

Dr. Watkin completed his Bachelor’s and Doctoral degrees at Cambridge University. He lectured at Cambridge for a couple of years before moving with his family to Australia, where he now works as a lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne. He is the author of a number of academic books in the area of modern European philosophy, including Difficult Atheism (2011) and French Philosophy Today (2016), both with Edinburgh University Press. Over the past few years he has written four books published by P&R Publishing. Three of them are in the Great Thinkers series: Jacques Derrida (2017), Michel Foucault (2018) and Gilles Deleuze (forthcoming).

Links to Thinking through the Bible

Main site: https://thinkingthroughthebible.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thinking-Through-the-Bible-455889715164228/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thinking_bible

Participants: Adam York, Camden Bucey, Christopher Watkin

Camden Bucey - June 14, 2019 - Pentateuch, Philosophy - No Comments

Vos Group #55 — Did the Later Prophets Create an Ethical Monotheism?

We turn to pages 206–211 of Vos’ book Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments to continue our discussion of critical theories of prophetism. Vos tackles a modernist, critical theory of the development of monotheism under the prophets. Vos wants the reader to enter into a modernist world–a critical world. In that world, there are three main things you will face:

A finite and developing conception of deity
A mechanical and purely natural conception of history
An errant and merely human conception of the Bible

These are the key features of a “critical” approach to the prophets. But, as Machen pointed out so clearly, these three conceptions represent a different religion: a fundamentally Pelagian conception of religion.

Vos helps us see, by contrast, that the kingdom of God and the demand that he be worshipped exclusively is built into man as the image of God. Adam, from the start, was bound to God in a religious relation by creation that the covenant of works was to advance. Man, from the beginning, exists to worship God–to glorify and enjoy God forever in covenantal fellowship. For the liberal to reverse this relation and insist that God must serve the purpose of man is to lay bare that the critics truly do have a different religion. On this, Vos and Machen are one.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Camden Bucey - June 7, 2019 - Prophets, Vos Group - No Comments

Reformed Apologetics

J. V. Fesko has written Reforming Apologetics: Retrieving the Classic Reformed Approach to Defending the Faith (Baker Academic, 2019). In the book, Dr. Fesko criticizes, among others, Cornelius Van Til. In this conversation, we interact with the book and compare its claims with those of Van Til. A central claim of Dr. Fesko’s is that Van Til rejects “common notions.” He writes:

in the middle of the seventeenth century, philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704) rejected the idea of common notions. In the twentieth century, this rejection made its way to liberal and conservative Reformed theologians alike, including Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987).”[1]

He draws particular attention to Van Til’s discussion of authority and reason on pages 168–169 of Defense of the Faith (3^rd edition).[2] On those pages, Van Til makes an important distinction:

A word must now be said about the idea of ‘common notions’ referred to in the quotation given above. The present writer made a distinction between notions that are psychologically and metaphysically, that is revelationally, common to all men, and common notions that are ethically and epistemologically common.[3]

Van Til continues, “All men have common notions about God; all men naturally have knowledge of God.”[4] So, what is Van Til getting at? There are notions common to all men, but there are some things common to believers and others common to unbelievers. Van Til explains what is also common to natural man as a consequence of total depravity:

It is this actual possession of the knowledge of God that is the indispensable presupposition of man’s ethical opposition to God. There could be no absolute ethical antithesis to God on the part of Satan and fallen man unless they are self-consciously against the common notions that are concreated with them. Paul speaks of sinful man as suppressing within him the knowledge of God that he has. . . . It is these notions of human autonomy, or irrational discontinuity and of rationalistic continuity that are the common notions of sinful or apostate mankind.[5]

[1] J. V. Fesko, Reforming Apologetics: Retrieving the Classic Reformed Approach to Defending the Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 24.

[2] Fesko, 24n56.

[3] Cornelius Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: P & R Publishing, 1967), 168.

[4] Van Til, 168.

[5] Van Til, 168.

[6] Van Til, 168.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy

Camden Bucey - May 31, 2019 - Anthropology, Apologetics - 16 Comments

Reformed Forum, the Church, and the Great Commission

Reformed Forum exists to present every person mature in Christ (Col. 1:28). We do that specifically by supporting the Church in her God-ordained task of accomplishing the Great Commission. In this episode, we discuss our mission and vision and share exciting news about the future of our ministry including Camden Bucey’s transition to become our full-time Executive Director.

Reformed Forum Proposal (May 2019)Download

Reformed Forum is an organization committed to providing Reformed Christian theological resources to pastors, scholars, and anyone who desires to grow in their understanding of Scripture and the theology that faithfully summarizes its teachings. We are committed to the principles of the Reformation and a redemptive-historical approach to Scripture. We believe these faithfully represent the teachings of the Bible, which is our only standard for faith and practice.

During the Modernist-Fundamentalist Controversy of the early twentieth century, E. J. Young wrote to J. Gresham Machen, the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary and key figure in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which had yet to be formed:

Within the church there should be an organization, entirely independent of the formal church, which would act as leaven. This organization should be composed of ministers, elders and laymen of the new church alone, who not only believe the Westminster Confession but who are on fire with it. The purpose of this organization should be to propagate and to defend the Reformed faith, to point out the errors of modernism, sacerdotalism, premillennialism, Arminianism, Trichotomy, and so much of the anti-Scriptural evangelism of today. Furthermore, this group would seek to propagate Reformed literature, such as your book, Christianity and Liberalism, Boettner’s book and works of that type. It would seek to propagate this literature not only among the clergy but also among the laity. In other words, it would be a missionary agency whose primary field is the church. Further, it would eventually seek to promote truly Reformed Bible Conferences and Evangelistic Campaigns, would seek to start Reformed Bible classes and prayer meetings and would seek to encourage Reformed radio broadcasts, etc.
E. J. Young, letter to J. Gresham Machen, October 2, 1935.

Seventy-three years passed before Reformed Forum was founded and much has changed regarding technology, but providentially we have become such an organization. There is a need today just as there was then, because the theological challenges persist. We are committed to be faithful to Scripture to the end that Christ would be glorified in the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

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Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy, Mark Van Drunen

Camden Bucey - May 24, 2019 - Ecclesiology, Missions - 7 Comments

All Israel Shall be Saved: Interpretations of Romans 11

Many different interpretations have been offered regarding the phrase “all Israel shall be saved” in Romans 11. In this episode, we speak about five different interpretations, focusing on the three that are represented in confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian Churches.

Resources

Cornelis P. Venema, “In This Way All Israel Will be Saved: A Study of Romans 11:26” Mid-America Journal of Theology 22 (2011) 19–40.
Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Theonomy and Eschatology: Reflections on Postmillennialism” in Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, edited by Williams S. Barker and Robert Godfrey

Participants: Camden Bucey, Glen Clary

Camden Bucey - May 17, 2019 - Eschatology, New Testament - 6 Comments

The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Civil Religion

We welcome Richard M. Gamble, Professor of History, Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Chair in History and Politics at Hillsdale College, to speak about Julia Ward Howe’s poem, which came to be know as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Gamble is the author of A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War (Religion and American Public Life), which discloses the history of the hymn as well as its position within an overall intellectual history of civil religion within the United States.

Other Books by Richard M. Gamble

The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003.
The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to be an Educated Human Being. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007.
In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. New York: Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2012.

From the Publisher

Since its composition in Washington’s Willard Hotel in 1861, Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” has been used to make America and its wars sacred. Few Americans reflect on its violent and redemptive imagery, drawn freely from prophetic passages of the Old and New Testaments, and fewer still think about the implications of that apocalyptic language for how Americans interpret who they are and what they owe the world.

In A Fiery Gospel, Richard M. Gamble describes how this camp-meeting tune, paired with Howe’s evocative lyrics, became one of the most effective instruments of religious nationalism. He takes the reader back to the song’s origins during the Civil War, and reveals how those political and military circumstances launched the song’s incredible career in American public life. Gamble deftly considers the idea behind the song―humming the tune, reading the music for us―all while reveling in the multiplicity of meanings of and uses to which Howe’s lyrics have been put. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” has been versatile enough to match the needs of Civil Rights activists and conservative nationalists, war hawks and peaceniks, as well as Europeans and Americans. This varied career shows readers much about the shifting shape of American righteousness. Yet it is, argues Gamble, the creator of the song herself―her Abolitionist household, Unitarian theology, and Romantic and nationalist sensibilities―that is the true conductor of this most American of war songs.

A Fiery Gospel depicts most vividly the surprising genealogy of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and its sure and certain position as a cultural piece in the uncertain amalgam that was and is American civil religion.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington

Camden Bucey - May 10, 2019 - Modern Church, Practical Theology - 1 Comment

The Role of Surveys in Biblical Studies

Jim Cassidy speaks about his experience teaching a New Testament survey at South Austin OPC in South Austin, Texas. Surveys of the Old Testament, New Testament, and the entire Bible are useful for provide historical, cultural, geographical, and other forms of context in order to help us deepen and widen our understanding of God’s plan and purpose for his covenant people.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

Camden Bucey - May 3, 2019 - Biblical Theology, New Testament, Old Testament - 1 Comment

The Creator-creature Distinction in the Hypostatic Union

In the incarnation, the eternal Son of God assumed a human nature. He did this without giving up his divinity. He retains his immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, and all the attributes according to his eternal, divine, and necessary existence.

In this episode, we discuss how these two natures relate to the person in the hypostatic union. By looking at Scripture, the Council of Chalcedon, and our confessional tradition, we review an orthodox grammar for speaking about these matters.

An error in the doctrine of God or Christology, however minor it may seem, will inevitably compound as other doctrines are developed. We should always seek to maintain confessional orthodoxy by reviewing the basics from which we never graduate.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington

Camden Bucey - April 26, 2019 - Christology - 2 Comments

Vos Group #54 — The Origin of “Nabhi-ism” in Israel

We turn to pages 202–205 of Vos’ book Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments to continue our discussion of critical theories of prophetism. Vos answers critics who believe that Israel derived its understanding of prophetism from Canaanite religion by focusing our attention upon God’s word revealed in history. Contrary to the false prophets, true prophetism is centered on true religion, union and communion with God according to his word.

https://vimeo.com/331343314

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Camden Bucey - April 19, 2019 - Biblical Theology, Prophets, Vos Group - 1 Comment