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On the Death of the Old Testament

August 18, 2018 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

Andrew Bunt of ThinkTheology has shared an overview and some thoughts on Brent Strawn’s book The Old Testament is Dying.

Strawn’s basic thesis is that knowledge, understanding and good use of the Old Testament are waning; in short, the Old Testament is dying. He uses a helpful analogy to explore this by likening the Old Testament to a language. Languages help us make sense of reality, and the Old Testament has the potential to do the same. But languages can die, and so the analogy provides a useful way for Strawn to explore the possibility that the Old Testament is dying…

Strawn then explores how this demise can be seen more broadly, and it is here that he makes particular use of the language analogy. The process of a language dying is called repidginization because as the original language dies out the simplified version that is left is like a pidgin language. When languages repidiginize sometimes the pidgin version then develops into a new, but different, language called a creole. Creoles are completely regular – they remove all the complexities of the original language…

Christ is an Undivided Priest

August 10, 2018 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

Andrew Roycroft has an excellent summary of John Owen’s argument in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ for particular atonement by virtue of Christ’s undivided priesthood. In this case it is the priesthood of Christ Jesus which…

Henri Eugène Le Sidaner's 'A Beauvais Square by Moonlight'

Henri Eugène Le Sidaner’s ‘A Beauvais Square by Moonlight’

August 4, 2018 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

On Exceptions and Preliminary Principles of Presbyterian Polity

July 27, 2018 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

Guy Waters’ essay at Reformation 21 earlier this month prompted my recent batch of posts on ministers taking exceptions (i.e. expressing disagreements) with their church’s doctrinal standards. In 1788, the American presbyterian church issued a statement of eight preliminary principles of church polity, generally attributed in authorship to John Witherspoon. These preliminary principles since then have either been explicitly part of the governing documents (as in the PCA) or been sprinkled throughout and affirmed in the governing documents (as in the EPC) of American presbyterian churches.

The second of these principle states,

On Exceptions and Practice

July 19, 2018 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

When ministers are granted exceptions to their church’s confessional standards the church is allowing personal disagreement with its doctrine on the part of the minister. In considering the question of exceptions, I have been looking at the freedom of the minister to teach the exceptions granted to him. An error sometimes made is the ordaining presbytery attempting to prohibit the minister from teaching his own views. But often an opposite and equal error occurs: the minister believes that since he is granted an exception from the church’s doctrine, his congregation does not have to practice the church’s doctrine.

Let me use my church, the EPC, as an example. The congregations of the EPC follow the denomination’s constitution, which includes the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. These confessional standards inform and determine the practice of the church. Exceptions to the confessional standards are exceptions of personal belief when ministers take their ordination vows. There is no element in that process to allow congregations, the constituent parts of the denomination, to institutionally reject the constitution of the church. Just as a presbytery may not bind the conscience of a minister when granting an exception, the minister may not bind his congregation to his disagreements with the church’s doctrine…

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