A Little something Personal This Time

I haven't posted anything in a while and since for the immediate time being I am in between churches (doing some filling in here and there as needed till I can start down at Heritage this summer). Different from my normal posts here I thought I would define a few things from my own perspective:

Reformed: Conforming to one of the Historic Confessions / catechism i.e.:

• 39 Articles of Faith
• Belgic Confession of Faith
• Heidelberg Catechism
• London Baptist Confession 1644/1689
• Westminster Confession

An alternate definition I have considered would be: Covenantal in Hermeneutic and Calvinistic in Soteriology.

Evangelical: Ascribing to the Protestant Reformation's 5 Sola's

• Sola Scriptura:
  Scripture is the sole source of written divine revelation. Scripture alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured. The Holy Spirit does not speak independently of or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible and personal spiritual experience can not ever be a vehicle of revelation.
• Solus Christus:
• Sola Gratia:In salvation, we are rescued from God's wrath by his grace alone. It is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life.
  We deny that salvation is in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques or strategies by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature.
  
• Sola Fide:
  Justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. In justification Christ's righteousness is imputed to us as the only possible satisfaction of God's perfect justice.
• Soli Deo Gloria:
  Because salvation is of God and has been accomplished by God, it is for God's glory and that we must glorify him always. We must live our entire lives before the face of God, under the authority of God and for his glory alone.
  

Covenantal: Or New Covenantal as opposed to one of the dispensational forms

Calvinist: Adhering to the doctrines of grace with regards to salvation

What I am:
OK now is the time I throw down some "big words" to establish my theological positioning. If you are interacting with me with reagrds to this then I ask that you not describe your position as "Biblicist: I just believe what the bible says" or "Pan-Millennial: as it will all pan out in the end" these are excuse positions. If you don't know, that is fine read, pray about it and figure it out.
I have debated how best to order these. Ways I have considered:

Alphabetically

Logically

Phenominally

Theologically / Dogmatically

1. Confessional: I ascribe to slightly modified forms of
   The LBC 1644
   The LBC 1689
   Westminster Confession
   The 39 Articles
   and can I hang with the rest of them pretty well. Issues I have are the Pope being 'THE' anti-Christ, I can give him 'AN' anti-Christ but I don't see him as 'THE' and Paedo-Baptism
   

2. Soteriology: I am a Calvinist

3. Hermeneutic: I favor the "Redemptive Historical Christocentric" model which is effectively:
   1. The assumption of corporate solidarity or representation.
   2. That Christ is viewed as representing the true Israel of the Old Testament and true Israel, the church, in the New Testament. Christ and the church fulfill what is prophesied of Israel in the OT.
   3. That history is unified by a wise and sovereign plan so that the earlier parts are designed to correspond and point to the latter parts.
   4. That the age of eschatological fulfillment has come in Christ.
   5. As a consequence of (C) and (D), the fifth presupposition affirms that the latter parts of biblical history function as the broader context to interpret earlier parts because they all have the same, ultimate divine author who inspires the various human authors, and one deduction from this premise is that Christ as the center of history is the key to interpreting the earlier portions of the Old Testament and its promises. Be sure to make note of both continuity and contrast.

4. Baptismally: Credo Baptist
   • I favor Credo-Baptism but since:
     1. I do not ascribe regeneration to baptism,
     2. Nor do I see the efficacy as coming from the baptizer
   • I believe it to be a wrong thing to be baptized a second time.
   So let me be as clear as possible about this:
   1. Baptism may proceed regeneration, but
   2. It should not
   Further, baptism should be performed ideally in living (flowing) water.

5. The Order of Decrees: Infralapsarian or Supralapsarian
   • I don't want to waffle on this and there is the issue that AA Hodge brings up: "The question as to the Order of Decrees is not a question as to the order of acts in God decreeing, but it is a question as to the true relation sustained by the several parts of the system which He decrees to one another," (Outlines, p. 230).
   • The other part of me wants to shout out: What part of "out side of time" do you people not get!
   • If you are going to make me pick one then right now I am probably Supra with some leanings towards Infra.

6. Bibliology/ Inspiration: Plenary Verbal
   1. The word plenary means "full" or "complete". Therefore, plenary verbal inspiration asserts that God inspired the complete text(s) of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and including both historical and doctrinal details.
   2. The word verbal affirms the idea that inspiration extends to the very words the writers chose. The Holy Spirit guided the writers along with allowing them the freedom of their own personalities to produce the Bible we have today. This view recognizes both the human and divine element within Scripture.

7. Ecclesiology: Elder lead which I consider to be one of the following models:
   • Single Elder within a synod / where affiliated churches share elders: This model should likely be limited to small congregations, but does have some flexibility. This is probably a young subset of the Episcopal model below
   • Presbyterian / Synod Model: Plurality of elders in a single location where representative elders routinely gather for discussion of issues and then their representatives and representatives of the laity then gather to form normative statements. This seems to be a concession to congregationalism.
   • Episcopal Model: Hierarchical with one or more Archbishops presiding over Bishops over dioceses.
   If I were to go far enough with this I would probably set things up where candidates for clergy would spend 1-2 years studying under their local clergy, spend another 2 years at a regional seminary where the Professors would be retired Bishops and Clergy presided over by an Archbishop and then the last year of study would be as an assistant to an Archbishop doing whatever needs to be done, filling in for clergy, research, getting to know the system etc.

8. Eschatology: Amillenial
   1. Redemptive-Historical form of modified idealism in the line of Beale and Hendriksen
   2. The purpose of Revelation is to 'comfort the militant Church in its struggle against the forces of evil'.
   3. Amillenial means that I do not understand scripture to impose a literal 1000 year block to the reign of Christ on the earth. Which the Posties(1) have also adopted. Further however while the Posties are "positive" in their outlook on history I do not see a general increase in the "Christianization" of the world. I do however believe that at the Parousa there will immediately come the resurrection (2nd) and the judgment followed immediately by the renewal of creation so there will be no literal 1000 year reign of Christ on this fallen world.
   I tend to throw around some vernacular that is particular to me: It is not meant to be depreciating but sometimes people regard it as such: I should probably get over it
   • Posties- or Postie Toasties a.k.a. Post-Millennial As notably compared to
   • Amies (Amillennial)
   • Premies (Historic pre-millennial) or
   • Dispies Dispensationalist
   • Baby sprinkling a.k.a. Paedo-Baptism, as opposed to
   • Drowning out the demons or Credo-Baptism.

9. Covenantal Model: Covenantal
   In brief, Covenant Theology teaches that God has established two covenants with mankind and one within the Godhead to deal with how the other two relate.
   1. The first (in logical order), usually called the Covenant of Redemption, is the agreement within the Godhead that the Father would appoint his son Jesus to give up his life for mankind and that Jesus would do so.
   2. The second, called the Covenant of Works, was made in the Garden of Eden between God and Adam and promised life for obedience and death for disobedience. Adam disobeyed God and broke the covenant, and so the third covenant was made between God and all of mankind, who also fell with Adam according to Romans 5:12-21.
   3. This third covenant, the Covenant of Grace, promised eternal blessing for belief in Christ and obedience to God's word. It became the basis for all future covenants that God made individually (with Noah, Abraham, and David), nationally (that is, with the Israelites as a people), and universally with man in the New Covenant. These individual covenants are called the "biblical covenants" because they are explicitly described in the Bible.

10. Worship: High Liturgical:
    This is another waffling point for me.
    1. You see I love liturgy. Much of my teenage and young adult years were spent in liturgical churches.
    2. However I am open to the regulative principle which of course is the exact opposite of High Liturgy.
    3. I will say that contemporary services are rarely if ever done well and tend to at the best bring glory to the musical participants and at worst detract from the worship of God.
    4. High liturgy when done well draws the participant into the worship of God.

11. Charisma: moderate concentric cessationist
    I believe that the miraculous gifts are now non-normative That is to say:
    • It is not the standard / the expression is very limited in the mainstream church and evangelized areas
    • May appear in unreached areas as an aid to spreading the Gospel.

12. On Orthodoxy: I ascribe to the following ecuminical councils:
    • First Council of Nicaea, (325); repudiated Arianism, adopted the Nicene Creed.
    • First Council of Constantinople, (381)
      Council of Ephesus, (431); repudiated Nestorianism, proclaimed the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God.
    • Council of Chalcedon, (451); repudiated the Eutychian doctrine of monophysitism, described and delineated the two natures of Christ, human and divine; adopted the Chalcedonian Creed.
    • Second Council of Constantinople, (553); reaffirmed decisions and doctrines explicated by previous Councils, condemned new Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite writings.
    • Third Council of Constantinople, (680–681); repudiated Monothelitism, affirmed that Christ had both human and Divine wills.
    • Council of Constantinople of 754 (754). Dismissing #15 and 17

13. On Hetrodoxy:

14. On Heresy:
    I do firmly believe that the teaching of Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism is heretical, that Arminianism is wrong and should not be taught, nor should Amyraldianism. Heresy here however brings up an interesting discussion which I am not going to take the time to go over in any depth: Can a heretic go to heaven while still believing heresy? Well I think that heresy is the teaching of things contrary to scripture. Note a heretic must be teaching to be a heretic; otherwise the person is simply in error. I have to say that since salvation is not based on the individual but rather completely relies on the redeeming work of Christ and the regeneration by the Holy Spirit that yes a Heretic can believe and be teaching wrong things and still go to heaven. I do however believe that God will not allow his people to continue in error so the heretic is highly suspect to simply be non-regenerate.