Who Said That?

"We can reconcile Paul and James by taking into account the factor of time (something systematic theology, with its abstract methodology, tends to leave out). Initial justification — the pole the Reformers focused on in their disputes with Rome — is by faith alone. Hence sola fide must stand unchallenged. Final justification, however, is according to works. This pole of justification takes into account the entirety of our lives — the obedience we’ve performed, the sins we’ve committed, the confession and repentance we’ve done.”

Please leave your guess in the comments section below.  Please, no google searches or cheating.  Answer to follow next week.

Update on Friday, October 8, 2010 at 11:06AM by Kim Riddlebarger

This is from Rich Lusk's essay "Future Justification to Doers of the Law.”

A Free Download! My Chapter from "Always Reformed"

The kind folks who brought you Always Reformed:  Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey, (Scott Clark and Joel Kim) are making my chapter "The Reformation of the Supper" available for free.

You can find it here:  Free Download

Don't let this keep you from buying the book!  If you like my chapter, remember all the other chapters are better! 

If you don't like my chapter, remember that all the other chapters are better!

"You Play Ball Like a Girl" Revisited

I love it when politicians get their self-inflicted come-uppins . . .

Interested in Eschatology? Live in SoCal? The Academy Is Back Tonight!

Tonight at 7:30 p.m. (lord willing), I will be resuming (and concluding) my series on the basics of amillennial eschatology, entitled "Amillennialism 101."

Come on out and join us!  Previous lectures in this series are posted under the header "Amillennialism 101."

For more information and directions, you can check here: (Academy Schedule)



The "White Horse Prophecy" -- It's Not What You Think!

The "White Horse Prophecy" has nothing to do with an inn in Cambridge, with our radio broadcast, or with "Dad Rod" having a word of knowledge.  It's a Mormon thing (The White Horse Prophecy.

According to Dana Milbank:

In one of his first appearances on Fox News, Glenn Beck sent a coded message to the nation's six million Mormons -- or at least those Mormons who believe in what the Latter-day Saints call "the White Horse Prophecy."

"We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance," Beck told Bill O'Reilly on November 14, 2008, just after President Obama's election. "I feel the Constitution is hanging in the balance right now, hanging by a thread unless the good Americans wake up."

The Constitution is hanging by a thread.

Most Americans would have heard this as just another bit of overblown commentary and thought nothing more of it. But to those familiar with the White Horse Prophecy, it was an unmistakable signal.

The phrase is often attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church. Smith is believed to have said in 1840 that when the Constitution hangs by a thread, elders of the Mormon Church will step in -- on the proverbial white horse -- to save the country.

"When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the 'Mormon' Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it," Brigham Young, Smith's successor as head of the church, wrote in 1855.

Frankly, I would prefer a word of knowledge from Dad Rod . . .

In Honor of W. Robert Godfrey -- "Always Reformed"

It is finally here!  The secret is out.  For the last two years, Scott Clark and Joel Kim have been working on a volume of essays in honor of Bob Godfrey on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday.

If anyone is deserving of such an honor, it is Bob Godfrey.

Scott Clark has the scoop and ordering information:  Click here

Here's a list of the essays and contributors.

Preface: Our Man Godfrey—R. Scott Clark

I. Historical

1. Christology and Pneumatology: John Calvin, the Theologian of the Holy Spirit—Sinclair B. Ferguson

2. Make War No More? The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of J. Gresham Machen’s Warrior Children—D. G. Hart

3. God as Absolute and Relative, Necessary, Free, and Contingent: the Ad Intra-Ad Extra Movement of Seventeenth-Century Reformed Language About God—Richard A. Muller

4. “Magic and Noise:” Reformed Christianity in Sister’s America—R. Scott Clark

5. Karl Barth and Modern Protestantism: The Radical Impulse—Ryan Glomsrud

II. Theological

6. Reformed and Always Reforming—Michael S. Horton

7. Calvin, Kuyper, and “Christian Culture”—David VanDrunen

8. History and Exegesis: The Interpretation of Romans 7:14–25 from Erasmus to Arminius—Joel E. Kim

9. John Updike’s Christian America—John R. Muether

III. Ecclesiastical

10. The Reformation, Luther, and the Modern Struggle for the Gospel—R. C. Sproul

11. The Reformation of the Supper—Kim Riddlebarger

12. Preaching the Doctrine of Regeneration in a Christian Congregation—Hywel R. Jones

13. Integration, Disintegration, and Reintegration: A Preliminary History of the United Reformed Churches in North America—Cornelis P. Venema

14. Epilogue: The Whole Counsel of God: Courageous Calvinism for a New Century—W. Robert Godfrey

Update on Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 11:19AM by Kim Riddlebarger

Just got my copy in the mail.  The essays look great, but the book itself is beautifully bound and type-set.  Nice!

Be sure to listen to the presentation ceremony.  Dr. Godfrey was very much surprised and appreciative.

Scott's got the latest:  Book Presentation

This Week's White Horse Inn

Almost Christian

On this edition of the program, Michael Horton talks with Princeton Seminary professor Kenda Creasy Dean about her new book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church. Kenda, along with sociologist Christian Smith, was one of the researchers for the National Study of Youth & Religion project that surveyed thousands of teenagers over a five-year period. In her new book she observes that "if churches practice moralistic therapeutic deism in the name of Christianity, then getting teenagers to church more often is not the solution (conceivably it could make things worse). A more faithful church is the solution."

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/



White Horse Inn Taping at the Desiring God Conference

Here's a photo of the "usual cast of characters" minus Ken Jones and including our producer, Shane Rosenthal.  We taped a program dealing with "textual narcissism" (or "you probably think this verse is about you").  The taping was well-attended (it was during the dinner hour) and well-received.  The program will be broadcast in a few months.

Ken tried to bring his talents to Minneapolis, but got delayed in Detroit.  Dr. Stephen Nichols filled in for Ken (and did a great job, by the way).

Who Said That?

"Man, however, whose nature was to be in a manner intermediate between angels and beasts, God created in such a way that, if he remained subject to his Creator as his true Lord, and if he kept the commandments with pious obedience, He should pass over into the company of the angels and obtain, without suffering death, a blessed immortality without end.  But if he offended the Lord his God by using his free will proudly and disobediently, he should live, as the beasts do, subject to death: the slave of his own lust, destined to suffer eternal punishment after death."

You know the drill.  Leave your guess in the comments section below.  Please, no google searches or cheating.  Answer to follow next week.

Update on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 10:38AM by Kim Riddlebarger

This quote--which clearly describes a covenant of works--comes from St. Augustine, in the City of God, XII.22.  I thought that Reformed scholastics invented this out of whole cloth.

VanDrunen's Lectures on Christianity and Culture

David VanDrunen recently gave a series of lectures on Christianity and Culture at the Estacada Christian Church (9-25-2010).  The lecture series is sponsored  the Reformation Society of Oregon.

Here are the links to the lectures:

Lecture One -- An Historical Perspective

Lecture Two -- A Biblical Perspective

Lecture Three -- A Practical Perspective

Question and Answer Session