If I have made any contribution to the understanding of Reformed Orthodoxy, it is this: the Reformed faith at its best is a brilliant and catholic articulation of the Christian faith, as developed in the ancient church and Middle Ages, and then refracted though the necessary corrections made by Protestant exegetes and theologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Only as the notion of 'scripture alone' has been wrested from context and come to be understood as 'we only need to read the Bible' has this catholic and historic dimension been lost. This has then been compounded by the abandonment of the great creeds, confessions and catechisms in our church practice. Reformed Orthodoxy gives you the best of the Christian creedal tradition, combined with vital Protestant insights such as justification by grace through faith, and the centrality of assurance to Christian experience.
The loss of historical rootedness and identity which evangelicalism seems to have experienced has left us vulnerable to the attractions of Rome and Constantinople; but it does not have to be that way. Evangelicalism has sold its birthright; we should reclaim it before it is too late.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Trueman Interview
Part 3 of the Trueman interview is now up. An excerpt: