Reformed Forum

Charles Williams speaks about the life and theology of one of Christianity’s greatest figures, Augustine. Mr. Williams is Associate Pastor at Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois.

WTSBooks.com has generously offered a copy of Augustine’s The Trinity for a giveaway. This is a handsome edition from New City Press. To enter your name for the giveaway, please signup for our email list. We’ll email the winner.

Participants: A. Craig Troxel, Camden Bucey, Charles Williams, Robert Tarullo

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

Charles Williams speaks about the life and theology of one of Christianity's greatest figures, Augustine.

The Heidelberg Catechism asks in question 69:

How does holy baptism signify and seal to you that the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross benefits you?

Answer: In this way: Christ instituted this outward washing[1] and with it gave the promise that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly His blood and Spirit wash away the impurity of my soul, that is, all my sins.[2]

[1] Matt. 28:19. [2] Matt. 3:11; Mark 16:16; John 1:33; Acts 2:38; Rom. 6:3, 4; I Pet. 3:21.

The significance of this sign is the assuredly that the promises made by Christ in salvation will be assured to be accomplished in the life of the believer. But what does that mean? Can a baby understand that, and how does that help the believer later in life?

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center hits the road for a series of episodes at Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois. In our first of the series, A. Craig Troxel speaks about Reformed spirituality. Dr. Troxel is pastor of Bethel OPC in Wheaton and teaches adjunct at Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Dyer, Indiana and Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has taught courses on Reformed Spirituality at both institutions.

Participants: A. Craig Troxel, Camden Bucey, Charles Williams, Robert Tarullo

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

A. Craig Troxel speaks about Reformed spirituality.

When I was born my mom who was not attending church and had me baptized…Anglican. My grandmother volunteered, (and I am using air quotes here) to babysit me. Her real goal was to have me baptized again…as a Catholic. When I was 10 I made a public witness in my church by being baptized…well as a Baptist. So whoever is correct about this I’m covered. But what is baptism anyway? Why do we do it and just who should receive it?

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

We continue our #VosGroup series by opening pages 154–155 of Vos’ book Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments to consider how Christ reveals and consummates the religious principles and realities embodied in the tabernacle and then elevated into the Church.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

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

In this episode of Vos Group, we turn to pages 154–155 of Geerhardus Vos's Biblical Theology to consider how Christ reveals and consummates the religious principles and realities embodied in the tabernacle and then elevated into the Church.

In Hebrews 8 we hear the words of the writer examining the prophecy made by Jeremiah. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. 8 For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” 13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” So how does this affect us today? Does this mean that everyone in the Church is saved? Is there still a future time for the fulfillment of this Covenant or has it all come already?

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Mentioned in this episode:

Christ the Center 1000

Christ the Center 1000

Today we welcome Daniel Ragusa, to speak about the Westminster Standards and their teaching of the self-sufficient and self-contained triune God of Scripture. Ragusa begins with Westminster Confession of Faith 3.1:

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

In developing this doctrine, Ragusa draws upon Cornelius Van Til’s Trinitarian theology, covenant theology, and representational principle. Ragusa writes,

According to Van Til’s representational principle, for man’s will to operate and for an act of his will to be significant and meaningful it must take place within an exhaustively personal environment, that is, it must take place within the sovereign and eternal plan of the self-sufficient triune God. The absolute freedom of God does not take away or limit man’s freedom, but rather establishes it in an analogical fashion.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Dan Ragusa, Jim Cassidy