Reformed Forum

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Petrus Van Mastricht’s Theoretical and Practical Theology Oct 11, 2019

Show notes

Todd M. Rester speaks about the theology of Petrus Van Mastricht (1630–1706). Dr. Rester has served as a translator of Mastricht’s Theoretical-Practical Theology, which is being published by Reformation Heritage Books and edited by Dr. Joel Beeke. As of this interview, the first two volumes (Prolegomena and Faith in the Triune God) are available. Mastricht presents a theological method particularly instructive for contemporary readers, treating every theological topic according to exegetical, dogmatic, elenctic, and practical concerns.

Dr. Rester is associate professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pennsylvania. He has served as a post-doctoral research fellow for the EU European Research Council project and at Queen’s University Belfast.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Todd Rester

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Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christianity and Liberalism – Chapter 4 Oct 08, 2019

Show notes

This week on Theology Simply Profound, Bob reads from J. Gresham Machen’s 1923 classic work, Christianity and Liberalism, Chapter 4, The Bible.

Participants: Robert Tarullo

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christian Perspectives on Sport Hunting Oct 04, 2019

Show notes

Dr. Bracy V. Hill, senior lecturer in history at Baylor University, speaks about Christian perspectives on sport hunting. While hunting isn’t the first thing on the minds of biblical scholars, hunting is mentioned and used in numerous metaphors throughout Scripture. One particularly mysterious account is that of Nimrod in Genesis 10. Moreover, the activity of hunting raises many important theological issues, such as man’s relationship to creation, the nature and eschatology of death, and the Christian’s directedness away from a wilderness toward a heavenly city.

Dr. Hill is co-editor of God, Nimrod, and the World: Exploring Christian Perspectives on Sport Hunting in which many of these themes are addressed. Dr. Hill is the author of many article and wrote a dissertation titled, “The Language of Dissent: The Defense of Eighteenth-Century English Dissent in the Works and Sermons of James Peirce.” He also appeared on the Meateater Podcast to discuss many of these themes but to an audience of hunters.

Participants: Bracy Hill, Camden Bucey

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Genesis 25:22–34 — A Conflict for the Ages Oct 02, 2019

Show notes

The conflict between Jacob and Esau serves as a paradigm for the redemptive conflict of the ages. God uses what the world would consider weak to accomplish his plan and demonstrate his power.

Participants: Adam York, Jim Cassidy, Mark A. Winder

Christianity and Liberalism – Chapter 3 Oct 01, 2019

Show notes

This week on Theology Simply Profound, Bob reads from J. Gresham Machen’s 1923 classic work, Christianity and Liberalism, Chapter 3, God and Man.

Participants: Robert Tarullo

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Schools of Biblical Criticism Sep 27, 2019

Show notes

Will Wood discusses various approaches to higher criticism, including source, form, and redaction criticism. This conversation dives into a topic that was covered briefly in an episode on the authorship of Isaiah.

Biblical higher criticism demonstrates several presuppositions that are contrary to orthodox understandings of history and the Bible. For example, predictive prophecy cannot exist. As a result, there is no a priori reason in their view for the Bible to have been written in the form we now possess.

Source criticism seeks to investigate how the various Bible books came into being through the use of disparate sources.

Form criticism does not look for written precursors to biblical texts but to oral precursors. Form critics believe earlier Israelite society was pre-literate. Therefore, sources that supposedly came to comprise the Bible were passed down through different oral forms, or getungen, which help to access the sitz im leben, or setting in life of the community.

Tradition-historical criticism uses methods from both source and form criticism. It distinguishes between traditium, which is the particular tradition content passed down, and traditio, which is the process of transmission.

Redaction criticism asks how the biblical books were brought into the full text we have today. Redaction critics are not merely concerned with oral or written sources, but with the activity of a type of editor, who brought them together.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Will Wood

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

The Mountain of the Lord Sep 20, 2019

Show notes

Mountains appear throughout the Bible as an important symbol of God meeting with man. In this episode, we trace the biblical-theological theme of mountains in an effort to understand more deeply God’s plan and purpose in bringing his covenantal people to glory.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Glen Clary, Jeff Waddington

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Genesis 25:1–21 — Epilogue to Abraham Sep 18, 2019

Show notes

In Episode 78 the panel discusses how the story of redemption shifts focus from Abraham to his descendants, and particularly to Isaac and Jacob. Employing a covenantal and redemptive-historical hermeneutic becomes important in understanding the significance of this shift and its implication for the inclusion of the Gentiles.

Participants: Adam York, Jim Cassidy, Mark Wind

Christianity and Liberalism – Chapter 2 Sep 17, 2019

Show notes

This week on Theology Simply Profound, Bob reads from J. Gresham Machen’s 1923 classic work, Christianity and Liberalism, Chapter 2, Doctrine.

Participants: Robert Tarullo

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Vos Group #58 — Revelation through Speech and Hearing Sep 13, 2019

Show notes

In this episode, we turn to pages 216–220 of Vos’s book, Biblical Theology, to discuss the reception of divine revelation through speech and hearing. Vos treats this topic because, among other things, it lies at the heart of true religion. If God is not speaking, then we do not know him. If it is merely men who speak, we do not know God and therefore are not in a religious bond of covenantal fellowship with him. It is of the essence of true religion to affirm that God speaks and that prophets hear God speaking and then speak that same Word to the church. You cannot have true religion without such supernatural verbal revelation.

This requires that God speaks to the prophet before the prophet spoke. This is critical, since it utterly destroys the liberal theories that locate the actual words in human agency alone, such as the kernel theory we talked about earlier. The speaking of God is not meant in a figurative way, “but in the literal sense it appears in various ways” (p. 217).

Vos next makes a point that the verbal communication from Jehovah is both external and internal, and that internal (to the soul or audible only to the prophet) does not collapse into the “consciousness theology” and the subjectivism of the liberal concept of “revelation” where revelation simply means a heightened moral consciousness or awareness of nearness to the ethical ideal of the prophetic religion.

Vos urges us not to probe the proportion of internal and external revelation, but to accept that both forms come to the prophets, making them bearers of words that have divine authority.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit