Verses of Interest from M'Cheyne Readings

Jeremiah 8:8-9
Matthew 22:1-14
Joshua 24:13-15
Joshua 24:19-28
Jeremiah 13:10-11
Jeremiah 13:23
Acts 4:27-31
Acts 5:41-42

Jeremiah 15:16

Jeremiah 15:19

Puzzle Piece Cosmology

I've been reading a book by J. V. Fesko, Death in Adam, Life in Christ, on the doctrine of imputation. Impu-what? Why read a book on doctrine of any sort, much less a doctrine that the normal person in the pew has probably never heard of? I was explaining to a high school Sunday school student that understanding our faith - the perplexities, the mechanics, the structure - is a little like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. You might have a piece that doesn't seem to fit, you set it aside and work on another area of the puzzle for a while. Sometimes, once you get a small section done, it fits as a unit into the bigger picture and makes a whole section more clear. Soon you see a place for those obscure pieces. 

As I read the book it became clear to me that the puzzle analogy might be useful in another way. For best results, one usually does not mix puzzle pieces from one box with those of another. Fesko delves into many aspects of the doctrine - it's history, exegesis (i.e., Bible passages that support the doctrine) and dogmatic construction (how exegesis and other doctrines support the doctrine). One important constructional element raised by Fesko is the the historicity of Adam, key to our salvation as presented in Paul's discussion of the "two Adams" (e.g., Romans 5:12-21). 

Such historicity is challenged by modern science, therefore I was interested to see how Reformed theologians dealt with these difficult to fit pieces. After a couple of Google searches I found Cornelius Van Til's Common Grace and the Gospel. From this blog post, it will be clear that my reading of Van Til would barely have scratched the surface, though it was clear to me from what I read that he was saying that to understand our world, one must approach it as a creature acknowledging a transcendent Creator. Any other way will result in incorrect assumptions. Using a less philosophical approach, one might note that while the natural world displays the unmistakable work of a Creator, the Creator's special revelation of his purpose and plan is necessary to make any sense of the bigger picture.  

Humbly acknowledging our limitations as creatures is the first step in rightly understanding our place in the world even if we have not completed our puzzle, much less understand how the puzzle in one box - for example, theology - might correspond with that in another - such as science. 

I am not really a blogger - or maybe I just haven't found the formula to maintain a blog long term. It is easy to become a slave to a blog - the amount of time it takes to do it well begins to cut into the time that one has to pursue the actual subject matter of the blog which, overall, seems self-defeating. So my intention with this attempt is to keep both schedule and topic somewhat loose. A blog for me to record thoughts and share resources and ideas.

The M'Cheyne Bible reading plan represents an important experience of faith and hearing for me. I cannot even remember how I fell into M'Cheyne, but it seemed, from the beginning, a perfect fit. After about the third year reading, bits and pieces started connecting and I began to recognize the overarching redemptive story. As with many things, if you do not put the time and effort in, it is difficult to reap the full reward - in fact, I believe that most Christians have a spiritual eating disorder. Even though I became an ardent M'Cheyne salesman, I found almost no takers among Christian acquaintances - the perceived time commitment was too great. 

A second important factor was the rich abundance of material available in 2017 in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Luther's posting of the 95 Theses. I drank in the history, issues and doctrines of the Reformation. Even though I was a member of a church in a Reformed denomination, I found almost no one else who had any interest. 

A third important experience was serving on a pastoral search committee for said church. The committee was split on the type of pastor that was needed. Our congregation was aging - how to attract young families? About half the committee was interested in a young, vivacious candidate (I would say "charismatic" but that might give the wrong impression), while the other half was focused on getting someone who would preach Christ crucified. We found the combination of Reformed orthodoxy and the ability to deliver it from the pulpit a rare commodity among seminarians and other applicants. I searched to better define the theology of preaching and why this was the guideline needed in order to identify a suitable candidate. 

And finally, I had the good fortune of being volunteered to teach a High School Sunday school class. My co-teacher and I had, pretty much, never spoken to each other before this assignment, but we found from the beginning that we had a good working relationship - which we needed, since we completely invented our curriculum. One year we focused on the Heidelberg Catechism; the second year we taught The Canons of Dordt. I was quite familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism from my youth, but my only previous connection with the Canons of Dordt was the acronym, TULIP. I found both of these confessions extremely rich. Each having been written with an explicit focus on teaching youth and adults in the congregational setting, and dealt with basic and practical aspects of faith and doctrine. 

While Reformed theology is often caricatured as mean and dry, in truth it offers the most comprehensive and most coherent understanding of the Christian faith available. Whenever there is a crisis in the church, the faithful mine the Scriptures for answers to critical questions. The Reformers were exemplars of this, searching the writings of the early church and studying the Bible in its original languages.  It is no exaggeration to say that all other denominations are reactions to Reformed thought - including the Rome's Tridentine response. To understand how faith and hearing relate to one another, Reformed thinking is a good place to start (below, from The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 1): 

The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.