part-time-calvinist

[part-time-calvinist]

Learn to Love the Trinity

If Christ-centered religion is neglected by some Christians, worship centered on the Triune God is so much more neglected. I would urge a Christian to read the Athanasian Creed frequently. Read it aloud once a week, and meditate on its phrases, until you are so familiar with it that it shapes your thinking. The Trinity is a difficult doctrine to articulate, and you will often find yourself spouting some ancient heresy if you do not guard your tongue. Read what God says about himself in the Bible, but do not try to formulate your own conception of the Trinity. If you are not hermeneutically trained, you will almost surely fall into one heretical ditch or the other. The church fathers arrived at the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity after lifetimes of study and devotion, taking into account the entire breadth and scope of the Bible, Old and New Testaments both. 

A good place to start when learning to love God in Trinity and Unity is 2 Corinthians 13:14: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.

It is a beautiful, simple illustration of the economy between the three persons of God, a Trinity working in Unity. It illustrates how the three persons are working in our lives in distinct ways toward a common end. The love of God the Father initiates our salvation, the grace of God the Son justifies us, and the communion of the Holy Ghost continually sanctifies us, comforting us and conforming us to the image of Christ, so that we may be sons of God. When we pray, we pray in the Spirit, and our prayers are offered up by the Son, our high priest, to the Father, who continually intercedes for us (Rom. 8:26, 8:34).

Can you look at 2 Corinthians 13:14 and see a Unitarian God? Can you see three Gods? Are grace, love, and communion just masks that God wears? Is the “Lord Jesus Christ” merely a man adopted by God? When we look with discernment on the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, we do not find these heresies. And when we consider the Bible prayerfully, we realize that the Trinity must be at the center of our faith and worship.

#Trinity #Orthodox #Athanasius #Father #Son #Holy Spirit

[part-time-calvinist]

Christ is the Center

I must remind myself all the time, that Jesus Christ is by whom, to whom, and through whom all things come to pass. I may be impressed by a particularly moral non-believer, but when I remember this person does not know Christ, I pity them. I may be concerned by the blasphemies of an atheist, but when I realize this person does not have Christ, I pity them. When I forget that I have Christ, I pity myself. 

I try to examine my religion frequently, to determine whether I am forgetting something, neglecting some duty. I must remind myself that if I do not begin and end with Christ in my thinking, I have neglected the vital thing of religion. I think about theology all the time, about different views and positions. But knowledge of theology, bare acceptance of doctrine is not true religion if that doctrine does not determine how you live your life. 

Though I write books, though I debate with non-believers, though I accrue a massive library, though I am constant as a Pharisee in my duty, though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not Christ, it is in vain.

#Jesus Christ #Christianity #Theology

[part-time-calvinist]

Justice, according to God

Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die. Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death. Numbers 35:30-31.

Although we are no longer under the Law of Moses, we know that this law is good, when it is applied properly: Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers. I Timothy 1:8-9.

There are at least three different videos of the death of George Floyd, and these stand as three independent witnesses, which is all that God requires to put a murderer to the death (Deut. 19:15, II Cor. 13:1). Not even to mention all of the eyewitnesses, but simply sticking to what we all have seen. It is a heavy thing for me to say this. Justice requires the death of the man who killed George Floyd, no matter if he wears a badge or not. 

The demonstrations and protests that have arisen all across the country seem to have been the only reason that the authorities arrested and charged the officer who killed Mr. Floyd, and the other responding officers who stood by. The fact that these men might never have been brought to court for this death, had it not been for the efforts of nation-wide protest, is disturbing. 

I support police officers. I know the vast majority of them are there to do good, and want to do good, to uphold justice, and that police officers are human just like us civilians. The Bible says that authority figures “are not a terror to good works, but to evil.” Lawful authority “is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Romans 13:3-4. 

I do not, however, support police officers, or any authority that disregards the law they mean to uphold, and abuses its power to terrorize and victimize innocent people. When things like this happen, justice must be done and examples must be made. 

All this being said, I deplore the violence and murder that has been done in response to this injustice. Acts of vandalism, theft, assault, and even murder. I realize the perpetrators of these crimes are a very small proportion of the demonstrators, but even this small proportion must still answer for what they have done. I hold in contempt anyone who apologizes for this violence, anyone who makes a joke of it, or gives their consent to it. Three things must happen in America:

1. Justice must be done for murder. The death of a murderer is the only answer for murder.

2. God’s law must be upheld, and applied justly. Without a standard of justice, we are forced to endure injustice.

3. America must repent of its sin, and come together in love, in order to achieve reconciliation. 

I apologize for not mentioning the racial tensions that lie under all of this. I must affirm that wherever institutionalized racism is found, it must be uprooted, and wherever personal racism is found, it must be repented. We are all image-bearers of the holy God, and we must conduct ourselves as such.

#Justice #Racism #Murder #Law #Protest

[part-time-calvinist]

What Gnosticism is, and what it is not

Gnosticism has become a wax nose and a straw man for modern Christians, who are actually unsure of what it is. Anything different from their viewpoint seems Gnostic, any heresy at all must be Gnosticism. This leads people, who may actually be influenced by gnostic thinking, to hurl the charge at others who have nothing to do with the heresy. A couple points:

1. Gnosticism is a philosophy, not a theology. Theology is what we can gather about God, drawn out of His revealed word in the Bible. Philosophy is what we can gather from the general revelation of Creation, and from the light of reason. Philosophy often influences how we read the Bible, whether we intend to or not; some philosophies bill themselves exactly in that way, as lenses through which to see the Bible. Gnosticism is not something you can draw out of the Bible, but one would have to interpret the Bible through Gnosticism in order to make sense of it. 

2. The philosophy of Gnosticism is deeply anti-Biblical. Gnosticism is polytheistic, believing that one Godhead birthed lesser deities, among which is Sophia, also called wisdom, and the Demiurge, which is the creator of the world. Gnosticism is dualistic, believing that the world is being contested between good and evil, between the spiritual and the material. The created world is corrupt and evil, and mortal man must detach himself from this world if he can hope to be saved. 

This is directly opposed to Biblical Christianity, which holds that God is one, and that one is a Trinity of three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, who are distinct but equal in substance and glory, so that it is heresy to say that there are three Gods, and equally heretical to say that the three persons are all the same. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and there was never a time in which Son and Spirit did not exist. The Bible holds that the persons of the Trinity worked together to create the world, and that when God created the world, He called it “good.” Biblical Christianity believes in the Incarnation, when the “Word became flesh,” that the divine nature was united with the human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus was crucified, dead, buried, descended to the dead and rose again, ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of God in the body in which he was resurrected. We believe in the resurrection of the dead, in which we shall see God in our own flesh, and that the current created order will be destroyed and replaced by a New Heaven and New Earth. All of which is impossible, even unthinkable in a Gnostic, dualistic system of thought.

3. Although Gnosticism is recognized as an heresy, it still influences Christianity. No orthodox Christian can claim to be a Gnostic. Paul and Jude preached against them. Jesus warned the seven churches of Asia against the Nicolaitans. Irenaeus battled them. The Gnostic gospels were excluded from the canon. Yet Gnostic groups have risen up both within and without the church in the past 2000 years. Manichaeism, Mandaeanism, which still survives, Catharism, and even Islam are all Gnostic in their thinking, according to the categories discussed in the second point above. These are easy to see, and Gnosticism flares up in several cults founded in the last 200 years; the polytheism of the Mormons, the dualism of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the spirituality and anti-materialism of Christian Science. 

Now I do not want to hurl the name of Gnosticism against everyone or to turn it into a straw man, but there are ways in which Gnosticism still affects our thinking in the church in very subtle, devious ways. Notions that physical things are somehow corrupt, that one should starve or expose oneself in order to get closer to God, that one should refuse medicine for illness, that pain is illusory. Anyone dabbling in numerology in the Bible should be careful not to look for gnosis between the lines. In many ways, Dispensationalism echoes Marcion, a 2nd Century gnostic, with the distinction of a “good” New Testament God and a “bad” Old Testament God. Dispensational Premillennialists often have the notion that Jesus failed to bring about his kingdom, that the Second Coming is God’s backup plan, that the end of all things will be when God takes us all to heaven, and that we should not involve ourselves in earthly affairs. 

I have seen bits of Gnosticism in myself, after having read the dialogues of Plato and thinking that they were perfectly compatible with the Bible. I began to doubt the resurrection of the body, and I didn’t clearly understand the Incarnation or the humanity of Jesus Christ as I should have. I had the idea that at the end of all things, our spirits would be freed from our bodies and we would be united with God, almost like Buddhism. Thankfully I have corrected these notions, but I continue to weigh my beliefs against God’s word.

4. The world is real. We have to fight heresies on either side, the hyper-spiritualism of Gnosticism, and the hyper-materialism of Atheism. Let’s remind ourselves that while the spiritual world is very real, the material world is also real; water, air, earth, wood, glass, paper, metal. The emotions and the sensations you perceive are real. Joy is real and happiness is real. Sickness is real and death is real. God understands when we are happy, healthy, well-fed, and comfortable, and He understands when we are tired, sleepy, hungry, or sick. These things aren’t illusions. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. Psalm 104:14-15. We don’t enjoy these things in spite of God, we enjoy them because God has provided them for us. Grounding ourselves in the reality of the created order I think is the best antidote against Gnosticism. 

#gnosticism #christianity #materialism #dualism #creation #spiritualism

[part-time-calvinist]

Edwards’ “Religious Affections”

This book appears on almost every list of must-read Christian theology books that I have seen, and so I was very eager to read it, written as it is by a man described as the “greatest theologian America has ever produced.” I was a little worried that it would be hard to read, 18th Century English being just a bit cumbersome, but after having read much of the scholastic 17th Century English of John Owen, Edwards was easy. The first part is about what affections are, and how they are produced in the mind and in the heart. The second part identifies what affections are not godly, and the third part identifies affections that do form part of the godly man’s character.

When I finished reading the last page, I felt as though I had escaped the book with my life. The introduction had warned me that the book might be very damaging to an immature Christian, and I am unsure who exactly I would recommend the book to. New Christians might benefit from its guidance and advice, but also might lose faith, seeing the roots of their faith in so shallow a soil. Mature Christians would probably benefit from it in learning how to spot truly godly affections in themselves and others.

I say all this because Edwards offers very cold comfort in this book. He warns that most of the things we rely on as evidences of our salvation, our testimony, our feelings and emotions about God, our hatred of sin, etc, can all be counterfeited by the Devil in the hearts of unregenerate men. Someone can walk like a Christian, talk like a Christian, and seem on the outside a model of a Christian, but in his heart still be unregenerate. Edwards learned this by his experience during the Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept America in the mid-18th Century. People who for a time truly repented their sin, professed to believe in the saving work of Jesus, and were regular in all the ordinary means of grace such as church going, praying, etc, in a few short years would seem to be unbelievers again.

If you are of a non-Reformed disposition, the notion that someone can be saved for a time and later lose their salvation probably doesn’t seem strange to you. But we know that the Bible teaches that regenerate Christians are eternally secure and will persevere in their faith, John 10:27-29, Romans 11:29, Philippians 1:6, etc. God will not cast us out, not will anything remove us from God’s hand, Romans 8:35-39. We also recognize that those who seem to apostatize were never really regenerated to begin with, 1 John 2:19.

Edwards believed this too, but he knew that the only way to get assurance of one’s salvation was to see the evidence of affections and works in one’s life, that godly affections were a natural result of a regenerate heart, and that godly works were a natural result of godly affections. I don’t know that I am any stronger for having read the Religious Affections, but I don’t think Edwards meant it to be just an encouraging book. He meant it to humble our pride, so that we would carefully search our hearts to “make our calling and election sure,” 2 Peter 1:10. But it’s not just a book for navel-gazing, its a call to work, because “Godliness is more easily feigned in words than in actions.”

#Jonathan Edwards #Theology #Sanctification #Reformed

[part-time-calvinist]

Demons, and also Beowulf

Beowulf is a never ending source of delight for me. It is an Anglo-Saxon poem written around 750AD, describing the deeds of the titular Beowulf, a hero from iron age Scandinavia. People use it as a source for Norse/Germanic mythology, but like other sources, such as the Eddas and the Nibelungenlied, it was a written by a Christian, and it often looks down upon the pagan past. The main antagonist of the first part of the poem is Grendel, a strange otherworldly figure described as a “grim ghost” and also a relative of Cain. The poet mourns that the Danes did not turn to God for aid against the monster, but called upon their pagan gods instead: 

“All the while, they gave honor to idols in heathen halls, begging for their aid against the ghastly bane... Such was the hope of heathens. They thought of hell in their inward mind, and knew nothing of the true God... Woe betide them with no hope of aid, that in the midst of sore need shall thrust their soul in the fathom of fire, which wends not a whit.”

Of course, Beowulf is just a story, and I don’t expect the original poet to have really believed that Grendel actually existed. But I do know that dark beings exist, and they don’t look as conveniently horrifying as Grendel. As a Christian, I believe that Satan is real, and I believe that Demons exist too. I do not think it is in vain that God warns us in Deuteronomy 18:10-12: “There shall not be found among you any one that [burns their children], or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.”

Demons are not outside the realm of God’s sovereignty, but their influence in the world is real. The Occult is a deep, dark rabbit hole, not to be made light of, and it is rampant in our culture. I heard one statistic that said there were more witches in America than Presbyterians. The Occult is practiced by the New Age movement, Scientology, Bethel Church, Wica, etc. It’s not uncommon for people to own Ouija boards and Tarot cards. If one wants to believe certain conspiracy theories, many powerful people are involved in strange rituals using blood, young children, mind altering drugs, etc. 

At the risk of sounding like a 17th Century witch-hunter, I must warn people to have nothing to do with occult practices. Direct no prayer to anything but God above. Do not perform any rituals that involve the use of blood or body parts. Stay away from mind-altering drugs. Be watchful, and fear none but God. 

#occult #Christianity #demons

[part-time-calvinist]

Behold here, a fit object for your choicest affections, – one in whom you may find rest [for] your soul, – one in whom there is nothing will grieve and trouble you to eternity. Behold, he stands at the door of your soul and knocks. O reject him not… Pray study him a little; you love him not because you know him not.

John Owen, on Jesus, from Communion with God

#john owen #reformed #jesus

[part-time-calvinist]

The Antidote to Human Suffering

The problem of pain is not the most potent argument against the existence of God, it’s the most petty. And when we speak about suffering in apologetics, our argumentation should not lead to the blasphemous conclusion that “Suffering is against God’s will, He just does nothing to stop it.” If that is the case, we might as well stop praying, stop worshiping this feckless, powerless being. That sort of being is a human idol, not the Creator, the most high God. 

I aim to tackle this problem briefly, and I must make a few statements to begin with. 1. God is sovereign. 2. There is no difference between what God permits, and what God wills. 3. Suffering is subjective, and is ultimately for our good. Let me explain each of these:

1. God created the universe (Gen. 1:1). God actively rules over His creation (Ps. 103:19). God does all that He purposes to do (Ps. 115:4). Nothing can stop the will of God (Job 42:2). As creator, God has the right to do whatever he wills with His creation (Rom. 9:21).

2. God is not the author of evil (Jam. 1:13). Yet God is sovereign over evil (Isa. 45:7). Man has strayed from righteousness (Eccl. 7:29). God permits humans to stray from righteousness, and to be evil for His own purpose (Prov. 16:4). All things, good and bad, happen according to the will of God (Lam. 3:37). 

3. Bad things happen to good and bad people alike (Matt. 5:45). God has a purpose for things that seem evil (John 9:3). What seems evil to us is intended ultimately for good by God (Gen. 50:20). What seems evil to us is ultimately for the glory of God (John 11:4). God has suffered for us (Is. 53:3). When we suffer, we know that God loves us (Heb. 12:6). Suffering produces Godly character (Rom. 5:3-5). All things, including suffering, work together for good for those who love God (Rom. 8:28). Those who will not suffer for Christ in this life must suffer in the next (Rev. 21:8).

Get over yourself. You are not special. If God was to treat you as you deserved, He would have destroyed you. As it is, each moment you draw breath is a mercy, intended to lead you to repentance. Nothing that happens is outside of the will and sovereignty of God, including the Black Plague, the World Wars, the Holocaust, and even this little pandemic we are suffering through right now. Even the worst pain you can experience in this life will be a “light, momentary affliction,” compared to the “eternal weight of glory.” 

The antidote to human suffering is the sovereignty of God. Your only real option is to trust Him, and to surrender yourself completely to His will. Come to know Christ, who suffered unimaginably for you, and was tempted in every way that we are. Through Him, come to know the love, justice, wrath, and mercy of God. 

#theology #God’s sovereignty #suffering #pain #good and evil #stoicism #Christianity

[part-time-calvinist]

In praise of the Book of Common Prayer.

There are few extra-biblical books that have aided my spiritual growth as much as the Book of Common Prayer, which I first began to explore three years ago. I venture to say you will not find a devotional book more catholic, more orthodox, more reformed, more Biblically-based and God-centered as this. It runs you through the Bible every year, and the Psalter every month. It reshapes your calendar around a liturgy of saint’s days and sabbaths. It reminds you of the three great creeds, the Apostle’s, the Nicean, and Saint Athanasius’, and provides you with a truly under-appreciated confessional, the Thirty-nine Articles. If you had only the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, you would still be well equipped with all things that pertain to life and godliness, along with a concise manual on a Christian’s life and theology. Not to mention the beauty of its prose rivals that of the King James Bible. I only wish I had the patience and the diligence to appreciate it more.

#anglican #BCP #common prayer #devotional #Christianity

[part-time-calvinist]

Think for yourself, or don’t

I was criticized recently for not being able to think for myself on religious matters. This was said to me by a nonbeliever, saying that I relied too much on what the Bible says about sin. Not an unflattering criticism imo, but honestly I could wish to have that problem; to be able to not think for myself.

I am a confessional, Trinitarian, sabbatarian, predestinarian, somewhat theonomist Reformed Christian, but as Luther said, “[it] took three years of constant study, reflection, and discussion to arrive where I now am...” Perhaps not *constant*, but my personal reformation took many long months of soul-searching, and a complete reworking of my way of thinking. I have had to change my mind many times on so many subjects. 

Sometimes I wish I had been spared from all this thinking, and when I approach others about these doctrines, I know what kind of mental effort and anguish I am asking from them. But the end is so much better, to rely so fully on Jesus Christ, and to have such faith in the sovereignty of the Triune God; it is truly a peace that passes all understanding.

But why must we prove everything exhaustively to ourselves? Why cannot we just have a childlike faith, and trust in the Bible, and just accept everything that has been written by theologians? Because we are rational creatures, and God has made us so. Besides, Christianity is a thinking religion, not unworthy of many lifetimes of thought. The more mental effort we invest in the doctrines of our faith, the stronger our personal faith grows.

We stand on the shoulders of giants. There’s nothing you can think of that has not been written about before. And if you seem to discover some new theory, it may already be an ancient heresy. Many excellent books have been written about Christian theology; the City of God, the Summa, the Institutes, just to name the greatest. There are so many more, more than could be read in several lifetimes, but as Richard Baxter said, “It is not the reading of many books which makes a man wise, but the well-reading of a few, if he could be sure to have the best.” 

You don’t have to rewrite systematic theology all by yourself to be a Christian, but Christ does command you to understand and believe the doctrines of the faith. Read your Bible prayerfully, and invest some time in theology; it’s worth the effort. 

[part-time-calvinist]

Christian Worldview

In fifty years, belief in Biblical marriage among Christians in America has eroded terribly. Acceptance of no-fault divorce, premarital sex, and the newer forms of homosexual partnership have left the church a house divided. This is astounding, and saddening that this change has come upon the American church not from forces within her, but from without. And it is not founded upon any real Biblical doctrine, but from the moral laxity of individual Christians. 

Or maybe not. Moral laxity is a symptom of problems that arise from the heart and the head. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9), and there is nothing that can improve it except the grace of Jesus Christ. The head is not unaffected by our natural depravity, but it can be improved upon with education, or as the Bible terms it, transforming and renewing the mind (Rom. 12:2). 

Nothing in our culture now improves or renews our mind, or orientates it to God. We have vague notions of loyalty to family, doing good to others, charity, etc., but no fixed ideas of righteousness. The dominant worldview today is postmodern, materialistic, relativist, deconstructive, opposed to borders between things, and desperately eschatological, fearing climate change and societal collapse. We do everything we can to make life easier, but at the same time, human life is a disease which the world would be better off without. The modern worldview is self-loathing, and then self-congratulatory once one has realized one’s lack of worth. We have dethroned our kings, we have declared the death of God, and now we are preparing to make one last pursuit for happiness, the pursuit of oblivion. 

In the Reformed community, an idea that is often discussed is Christian or Biblical worldview, or the lack thereof. The idea is that it once existed, and was once dominant in Europe, America, and beyond. Primarily, Christian worldview is revelatory, believing in the divine inspiration and infallibility of the Bible. To be a Christian is to believe in Creation, that the physical world is created by God for His eternal purpose, and that it is good for us, that the physical world is our home. (Gnostic, eastern philosophy has infiltrated our thinking in the last century, giving us an idea that the world is a wicked place from which we ought to escape and disassociate.) When we die, we do not melt away and become one with the universe. A Christian believes in the resurrection of the body, and that in the last days, a new heaven and a new earth will be our home, redeemed from corruption. 

Christian worldview holds to the Biblical standard of marriage, that of one man and one woman being joined together for the whole of their lives for companionship, for the containment of lust, and for the upbringing of godly children. Sex within the bond of marriage is good, sanctified by God. Sexuality outside that bond is forbidden, and to break that bond is unholy. 

A part of Christian worldview is theonomy, having a high regard for the law of God, knowing that we will all be judged under it, and understanding it as the basis of right and wrong, and of the laws of our society. Even though a Christian is not under law, but under grace (Rom. 6:14), grace frees us from the guilt of the law, not from the duty of the law, so that now we are not slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness (Rom. 6:19). 

After that, it becomes more difficult to parse the Christian worldview from the secular, partly because the two worldviews had so much in common at one point. We see where they conflict very clearly, in the debate over abortion, over same-sex union, over drugs and alcohol, over gender equality and the very existence of gender. It spills over into questions of race, gun rights, economics, as it should. Christians not well grounded in their Bible, the law of God, and in a sense of their own identity as belonging completely to Jesus Christ, have gone over to the secular party entirely. 

I think this is the heart of the problem, the inability to distinguish how a Christian should think, versus how a secular person thinks. For too long, for a thousand years and more, a Christian could rely on his culture having a worldview compatible with his religion. This turned into complacency, and when society turned against the Bible, we felt as though we had to follow suit, to change our religion to make it compatible with society, rather than changing society to bring it into submission to God. 

Christians must wade out into the tide of culture. We must write the novels and film the movies that shape our culture. There is a Christian way to be a parking meter attendant, or a janitor, or a barista, or a lawyer, or a head of state. What we do in the assembly on Sunday morning must affect everything we do outside of it. Everything we do must be done to the glory of God. 

[part-time-calvinist]

Thoughts on Bible collecting

Found myself searching for Bibles online the other day, admiring the admittedly beautiful Schuyler bibles from evangelicalbible.com. This while good leather-bound Bibles gather dust on my shelf. A beautiful design can make a Bible easier to read, and can make us want to read it more, but it can also appeal to our baser instincts of greed and envy. I am a reformed Christian, my religion is bound in books and my devotion is to read, study, and pray. I love the aesthetic of a library of finely bound theological books, but pursuing this rather than pursuing reformation of the heart can turn into vanity and sin. 

This may be a problem for many bibliophiles, loving more to collect books than to read them. I try to read a book within a year of getting it, and then to get rid of it if I can’t do it. My ideal is to read a limited number of books many times, so that I may get the most from them. I get this from a letter of Seneca, “You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.”

[part-time-calvinist]

Protesting what?

As a Protestant, it is difficult to keep up with more than 500 years of difference between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches, but it is unproductive to get caught up on superficial differences. Let us remember that we do not protest against the Virgin Mary or Saints, feast days, liturgy, church government, aesthetics, and other such practices. Article XXXIV of the Anglican Church:

“It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word.”

It does not matter if Roman Catholic worship is against our personal tastes. Our protest should be against what is repugnant to the word of God. Our protest is against works salvation, against worship of Mary, prayers to Saints, against unauthorized sacraments, against the claims of the Pope to infallibility, and his title as vicar of Christ, etc.

[part-time-calvinist]

Opening thoughts

Starting this blog just to share my own musings on theology. Not expecting much feedback, but I hope that some internet pilgrim can find aid and support here. Here is my thought for the day:

To know History is the see the providence of God in action. The Old Testament provides us with an insider’s knowledge of how God causes powers to rise and fall; apply that knowledge to history and to the modern day. Christ is reigning on His throne, and is steadily glorifying His Church. Let us be prayfully patient until His day.