I have received further information about the situation in the MTW with women’s ordination. First, the church in question has in fact called a husband and wife team to the pastorate. But the church is not in fact a PCA church. The PCA has a cooperative agreement with a local denomination there, a denomination which …
Faith the Instrument
Book 3/Chapter 11 Faith (section 7) 1. What does Calvin compare faith to? 2. What is faith, and what is its relation to Christ? Essential righteousness (section 8) 1. What is Osiander’s view? Atonement (section 9) 1. What is the basis our justification that does not comport with the divine nature alone? Refuting a slander …
Osiander Again
Book 3/Chapter 11 Osiander’s errors (section 5) 1. What does Calvin call Osiander’s doctrine of essential righteousness? 2. What was Osiander’s error? Confusion (section 6) 1. What two things does Osiander confound? 2. What illustration does Calvin use of things that must be distinguished but which cannot be confused? These are the questions for the …
Look at a Walnut
I had read Notes from the Tilt a Whirl before in its various manifestations. But when it arrived in its final printed form, I was happy to sit down and go through it again, left to right. What a good book this is. The conceit for the book is that the solar system is a …
Words and Music
In the modern world, we have come to think of music as one thing and “the words” as quite another thing. They may complement one another, like ham and eggs, but they are also separable and distinct. We therefore have instrumental music only, and we have poetry, or lofty speech. If the poetry is high, …
And Rather Starve Than Come
One of our hymns laments the choice that many others have made with regard to the Lord’s Table. Why was I made to hear Thy voice, And enter while there’s room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come? The choices men make are odd, and it is even stranger that if …
Turn Us Back to our Fathers
Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all. Father, we are invited to address You as Father, and on …
Wise Women Then Do Not Authorize Silly Women Now
Preaching today continues one aspect of the prophetic office, but it does so by continuing the work of weighing, discerning, evaluating, exegeting, and declaring. Preachers today are not inspired in the same way that Isaiah, Jeremiah, Agabus, or Philip’s daughters were. Because the grace of direct inspiration or utterance has been discontinued, what we now …
First Woman Pastor in the PCA?
Just to keep you posted, I have written an inquiry to a gentleman associated with MTW, the PCA’s mission arm. I wrote to ask him if there was any truth to an apparently credible report that I had heard, to the effect that an MTW church plant overseas had called a woman to be their …
Double Grace
Book 3/Chapter 11 Justification and regeneration (section 1) 1. Because Christ was given to us, what double grace have we received? 2. What is regeneration? 3. How important is justification to Calvin? The threshold (section 2) 1. Why do we need to get the concept of justification straight? 2. How do we appear in God’s …