Christ the Center

Kevin DeYoung joins Camden Bucey to discuss Church History for Everyone, Volume 1: The Story of Christianity from the Fall of Jerusalem to the Dawn of the Reformation. They consider why Christianity is inseparable from history and how the story of the church testifies to Christ’s promise to build and preserve his people by his Word and Spirit.

The conversation explores how Christians can remember faithful men and women without lapsing into hagiography—or reducing the past to a catalogue of failures. Camden and Kevin also discuss monasticism, the preservation of learning and liturgy, Protestant retrieval of medieval theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux, and the figures who will appear in the forthcoming second volume.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:50 Christ the Center 1000 summit update

12:55 Introducing Church History for Everyone

15:51 Conversation with Kevin DeYoung

17:30 From Sunday school lectures to a two-volume history

20:58 Why Christianity is inseparable from history

23:48 Church history as family history

26:38 Beyond hagiography and “warts only” history

30:57 Choosing characters and telling the church’s story

35:30 What Protestants can learn from monasticism

39:53 Recovering the medieval church

43:59 Previewing volume 2

46:53 Conclusion

Resources

Church History for Everyone, Volume 1

Clearly Reformed

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Jared Poulton joins Camden Bucey to discuss Van Til’s Counseling Movement: A Critical Analysis of Jay Adams and Biblical Counseling. They trace how Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetics supplied key theological instincts for Jay Adams and the modern biblical counseling movement, including the God-relatedness of every human problem, dependence upon divine revelation, and confidence in Scripture’s sufficiency for pastoral ministry.

The conversation also examines tensions within contemporary biblical counseling. Camden and Jared consider the antithesis, common grace, the relation of the book of nature to the book of Scripture, and the danger of either rejecting all extra-biblical knowledge or baptizing secular methods without sufficient theological scrutiny. Throughout, they argue that faithful counseling should serve the church’s disciple-making mission and bring every claim about human life under the authoritative framework of God’s Word.

• Van Til’s Counseling Movement
• Institute for Reformed Biblical Counseling

• 00:00 Introduction
• 03:12 Jared Poulton’s path into biblical counseling
• 09:12 What is biblical counseling?
• 17:44 The sufficiency of Scripture and pastoral counsel
• 23:09 CCEF, David Powlison, and Van Til
• 27:29 A Van Tilian foundation and an identity crisis
• 32:48 Competing trajectories in biblical counseling
• 41:02 Robert K. Rudolph and Jay Adams
• 44:02 Three streams that shaped Adams
• 50:57 God is man’s environment
• 55:58 Presuppositions and borrowed terminology
• 61:37 The antithesis and secular psychology
• 67:06 Scripture’s framework for counseling
• 72:59 Common grace and the two-book approach
• 75:56 Counseling in service of the church’s mission
• 77:42 Conclusion

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Hebrews never pits the covenants against one another as law versus gospel; it presents them as grace and grace—the same house, the same people, the same promise. Yet the old was always preparatory: shadow giving way to substance, promise to fulfillment. Marcus A. Mininger traces that organic development and shows why the unity of the one covenant is precisely what makes Hebrews’ warning so urgent. The address closes where the letter does—on persevering within the covenant and resting in the sole sufficiency of Christ.

Dr. Marcus A. Mininger is professor of New Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, with research on Paul and the General Epistles—including a forthcoming study of the warning passages in Hebrews.

Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.

Watch this address: https://youtu.be/DMhQflaD8PM

Watch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCA

reformedforum.org

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000

Few passages have unsettled readers like Hebrews’ warning that it is “impossible … to restore again to repentance” those who fall away. Does it teach a sin beyond forgiveness? Marcus A. Mininger clears away the common misreadings and names the real danger the author confronts: the temptation to abandon Christ and re-lay a foundation in the old covenant alone. The warning, rightly heard, is not about a sin too great to forgive but about the impossibility of going back—and it sets up the covenant question taken up in the session that follows.

Dr. Marcus A. Mininger is professor of New Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, with research on Paul and the General Epistles—including a forthcoming study of the warning passages in Hebrews.

Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.

Watch this address: https://youtu.be/9B4fCp9fems

Watch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCA

reformedforum.org

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000

A greater Joshua has come. Benjamin L. Gladd takes another look at Jesus’s exorcisms, reading them against the Old Testament backdrop of Israel’s conquest. Where Joshua led a people into an earthly rest by the sword, Christ leads his people into a greater rest by the Spirit and the word, defeating the powers that held them captive. The kingdom does not advance by force but by the triumph of the one Savior who gathers one people to himself, and the exorcisms are a preview of that greater conquest.

Dr. Benjamin L. Gladd is executive director of the Carson Center for Theological Renewal and formerly professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson. He edits the Essential Studies in Biblical Theology series and has written widely on the use of the Old Testament in the New, including works co-authored with G. K. Beale.

Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.

Watch this address: https://youtu.be/UeBRopgfpmI

Watch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCA

reformedforum.org

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000

When does the long-promised restoration of Israel take place? G. K. Beale gives particular attention to Acts 1:8 and its use of the Old Testament and argues that the restoration is already under way in the church's Spirit-empowered witness to the nations. God fulfills his covenant promises to Israel in Christ and carries them to the ends of the earth, as the one Savior gathers one people to himself. The answer has direct consequences for how we understand the church, the nations, and the promises of the covenant.

Dr. Gregory K. Beale teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary, Dallas. He is a leading New Testament scholar known for his work on biblical theology, the use of the Old Testament in the New, and the temple theme across Scripture.

Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, "The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose," at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.

Watch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCA

https://reformedforum.org

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000

Mark Gilbert joins Camden Bucey to examine what Protestants and Roman Catholics mean when they speak of Christian unity. Drawing on Gilbert’s conversion from Roman Catholicism, they contrast a unity grounded in the Spirit’s work through the Word with Rome’s institutional claim to mediate grace and gather humanity into one visible communion.

The conversation turns to Vatican II and Karl Rahner’s doctrine of the “anonymous Christian.” Camden and Mark consider Rahner’s anthropology, his account of God’s self-communication, and the influence of this framework on Roman Catholic inclusivism. They conclude with a pastoral call to speak with clarity and charity and to offer the assurance found only in the finished work of Christ.

• Talking with Catholics About Jesus
• The Nicene Creed
• The Nicene Creed and the Nature of Christian Unity

• 00:00 Introduction
• 03:48 Mark Gilbert’s journey from Roman Catholicism
• 10:50 The Rome Scholars and Leaders Network
• 15:04 Catholic inclusivity after Vatican II
• 20:36 Institutional and spiritual views of unity
• 26:43 The church as a continuing incarnation
• 28:58 Vatican II and Karl Rahner
• 35:36 Van Til, Rahner, and the image of God
• 45:18 The “anonymous Christian”
• 47:30 Roman Catholicism in a pluralistic world
• 52:06 Inclusivity, gender, and doctrinal development
• 58:19 Rahner, Ratzinger, and competing Catholic trajectories
• 61:28 The Roman Catholic Church as a “sacrament of unity”
• 65:33 Unity in truth and evangelizing Roman Catholics
• 70:14 Resources for churches and small groups
• 72:59 Conclusion

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

The covenant of grace has its source in eternity, in the covenant of redemption: the eternal agreement of Father, Son, and Spirit to save a people. In "Before the Foundation of the World," Camden Bucey traces the historical covenant of grace back to that eternal counsel. Following Herman Bavinck, he shows that the covenant revealed in time rests on an unchanging foundation in the counsel of the triune God. Before creation and before the fall, God purposed one redemption with one Savior at its center, and the unity and certainty of the covenant of grace rest on that purpose. This opening address gathers up the first two conferences in the trilogy and lays the foundation for the addresses that follow.

Download the handout (PDF)

Dr. Camden M. Bucey is executive director of Reformed Forum and host of Christ the Center. He is the author of Karl Rahner in P&R’s Great Thinkers series and Defending Our Hope: An Introduction to Christian Apologetics.

Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.

Watch the full conference

reformedforum.org

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000

We welcome Eli Ayala, host of Revealed Apologetics, to discuss Christian apologetics in the digital public square. Drawing an analogy to the Areopagus of Acts 17, Camden Bucey and Ayala consider YouTube’s remarkable reach, its dangers, the spiritual dimension of apologetics, the union of biblical content and method, current movements in online apologetics, and the pastoral task of guiding young people who encounter theology online.

Ayala recounts his path from a Spanish Pentecostal upbringing to Reformed theology and presuppositional apologetics, including the decisive influence of the Greg Bahnsen–Gordon Stein debate. He also explains the origins of Revealed Apologetics and reflects on the opportunities and distortions created by algorithmic media.

Links

• Episode page
• Revealed Apologetics
• Revealed Apologetics on YouTube
• Defending Our Hope

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:03 YouTube as the Modern Areopagus
• 3:43 Eli Ayala’s Background and Work
• 8:39 Spiritual Warfare and Apologetics
• 12:47 An Apologetic Awakening
• 17:06 The Bahnsen–Stein Debate and Presuppositionalism
• 20:42 The Origins of Revealed Apologetics
• 25:35 YouTube’s Promise and Peril
• 36:31 Biblical Content, Method, and Character
• 43:13 The Online Apologetics Landscape
• 47:33 Eastern Orthodoxy and Presuppositionalism
• 49:32 Islam and Christian Apologetics Online
• 50:52 Roman Catholic Apologetics Online
• 54:11 Guiding Young People through Online Theology
• 1:01:13 Conclusion

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

We welcome Andrea Ferrari to discuss his book The Fall and Redemption of Conscience: A Reformed Biblical Theology. Ferrari, pastor of the Chiesa Riformata di Perugia in Italy, explains why conscience has received comparatively little attention in modern Protestant theology and considers the influence of psychology, Karl Barth, John Webster, and John Calvin on contemporary accounts of conscience.

The conversation develops a biblical and theological account of conscience from creation to new creation. Ferrari addresses whether Adam possessed a conscience before the fall, the Old Testament vocabulary of heart, kidneys, and clean hands, Calvin’s sensus divini judicii, the Trinitarian basis of human self-awareness, and the effects of justification and sanctification upon a guilty conscience. The episode concludes with practical implications for preaching, counseling, and the Christian life, along with an update on Ferrari’s ministry in Perugia.

Links

• Episode page
• The Fall and Redemption of Conscience
• Chiesa Riformata di Perugia

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction
• 03:12 Andrea Ferrari’s Ministry in Perugia
• 12:43 A New Study Center near the University
• 19:11 The Fall and Redemption of Conscience
• 24:33 Why Conscience Disappeared from Modern Theology
• 28:41 Karl Barth and General Revelation
• 32:12 Did Adam Have a Conscience before the Fall?
• 49:27 Conscience in the Old Testament
• 58:53 Defining Conscience as Perceptual Awareness
• 64:23 Calvin’s Sensus Divini Judicii
• 65:27 The Trinitarian Context of Conscience
• 74:23 The Fallen Conscience and the Imagination
• 80:10 Training the Senses in Hebrews 5:14
• 81:47 The Justified Conscience
• 86:43 Sanctification and the Healing of Conscience
• 93:23 Pastoral Counseling and Preaching to the Conscience
• 100:02 Ministry Reflections and Conclusion

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX

Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000 Summit