Urban Puritano

When confessional Protestants begin treating the medieval fourfold sense as a recoverable resource—whether by reframing it as four moods, four sensitivities, or four applications—the need for a clear, sustained defense of the single sense becomes urgent. The confessions already settled the question. Soft retrieval does not revise that settlement; it quietly sets it aside.

If pastor and professor Hicks is full/strict (no doctrinal exceptions — a common Reformed Baptist standard), he cannot hold the quadriga without contradiction. A strict signer doesn’t get to keep a doctrine his confession denies, and “not manifold, but one” denies manifold sense in plain words.

If Hicks is system/good-faith, the honest move is to take an exception to 1.9. But the moment he does, he has conceded the correct 1.9 reading — because you only take an exception to a rule that stands against you. Registering the exception admits the plain words exclude the fourfold sense.

Is there a third option?

https://x.com/upuritano/status/2090301888340140103?s=46&t=LQtFM-3m0SCDSxEY3sbwIw

I've been monitoring the Quadriga situation for a few years now. Whether high church or low church, whether Non-Confessional or Confessional, whether Evangelical or Reformed, with the release of Patrick Schreiner's new book on the fourfold sense, the publicity campaign for the manifold sense's retrieval, revisioning, rehabilitation, and reframing as four moods, four questions, four applications, and four sensitivities is on and popping! 

It has some Evangelicals giving it a chance and certain Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians reinterpreting their own explicit confessional statement to do a 180 and accommodate the quadriga's hermeneutical method. 
Will it succeed? Is it just a semantics issue? Can't we all just get along?

Gird your loins for 10 Quadrigas worth of questions and answers based on my forthcoming book against the quadriga and a couple of special musical numbers for your listening pleasure!

For your convenience and listening pleasure, the first hour is just a church member and his pastor shooting the breeze about Evangelicalism, especially in North America and the West. The second hour, we get down to the nitty gritty of the Nicene Creed and Sola Scriptura. Do they fit like a hand and glove or are they like oil and water? Can Biblicists believe in the usefulness of creeds? Do creeds necessarily supplant the Scriptures? Gird your loins and enjoy a little Theology to Drive By 2026!

Catch up on past episodes! 

https://share.transistor.fm/s/ab5abfe9

https://share.transistor.fm/s/89564a04

https://share.transistor.fm/s/121360cc

https://share.transistor.fm/s/b3c10d7b

What is a Reformed Baptist Church? Pamphlets, booklets, and sermon series have been produced to answer this question for decades. Although their presence online may indicate large numbers, this would be mistaken. If the visible church is likened to a tree, how did the Reformed Baptist branch shoot out? What is the good, the bad, and the ugly, especially in North America in the last and present century? 
Have you visited a Reformed Baptist local church before? What was its ethos? 

Gird your loins as we scratch the surface on what a Reformed Baptist Church is.

The Sufficiency of Christ Considered: Promises Made, Promises Kept - Expository Devotional on Hebrews 11:39-40

All Urban Puritano explorations in expository preaching have been preached in a Spanish congregation and have been translated by yours truly to exemplify a hybrid Puritan approach to preaching for today. There is a simple style that presents the fruits of textual analysis and translates it into homiletical synthesis for the glory of God and the good of the congregation.

There is an Intro/Exordium that introduces the theme of the sermon broadly and narrowing it to the text on which the theme is based. The second portion of the sermon is the theme of the text being exposited. This theme or topic is its doctrinal substance and what is predicated about the subjecht matter. Next, there are reasons and arguments proving the doctrinal substance is rightly divided. Once the truth has been explained, the uses of the doctrinal theme must be spelled out. Just as there is no compunction in judiciously formulating the sermon's doctrinal theme in a homiletically appropriate way, neither is there any compunction in pastorally and judiciously deriving warranted implications from the text to apply to the hearers' hearts and lives. Lastly the conclusion/epilogue serves to summarize the exposition and call hearers to worship God in Christ through the Spirit.

For more on Puritan Preaching, take up and listen: https://share.transistor.fm/s/ace50a4b

For more of Christocentric Preaching, take up and listen: https://share.transistor.fm/s/a8809149

For more on Redemptive Historical Preaching, take up and listen: https://share.transistor.fm/s/82422c88

For seeing all of Christ in all of Scripture for all of life, take up and read my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL8HGMGQ?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_QH3Q4HU3ACDOSIO6ULF6&bestFormat=true

For helpful resources, please visit my hub: https://urbanpuritano.com/

Who is sufficient unto these things? 

Certain circles in Evangelical and Reformed academia are giving the Quadriga a pass when it comes to Biblical hermeneutics. It’s toleration and eventual acceptance and advocacy may be under the guise of an apostolic or Christocentric method of interpretation. Soon, there will be a full court press to a full throated embrace of the Quadriga by Evangelicals and some Reformed scholars may fall under this spell themselves.

It’s one thing to appreciate the Quadriga’s general openness to the Bible’s polyvalence. It’s quite another thing to locate the Bible’s polyvalence, as the Quadriga does, in four distinct senses of Scripture. The Bible student in the pew must go beyond faddish academic deliverances found in history to critically assessing them according to Scripture itself. This is the Berean way.

What interpretive virtues must we be guided by as we read and interpret the Bible in the church?
 Gird your loins as we weigh the Quadriga and find it wanting!

The literal sense of Scripture gives way to no other sense of Scripture because there is no other sense than the literal sense of Scripture. Sorry, not sorry, Quadrigans! It's time for Evangelicals and Confessional Protestants to retrieve its rejection!

Some things are so fundamentally flawed, coming up with alternatives should be easy. Some things are so fundamentally flawless, coming up with refutations should be impossible. The Quadriga is not hermeneutically viable. Never was. Never shall be. That's what makes its treatment with kid gloves by some academics, pastors, and their young seminarian acolytes a contra-confessional anomaly. Soon, there will be a full court press hailing its hermeneutical virtues as simply expressions of Biblical assumptions and sensibilities.

Litera gesta docet,
quid credas allegoria;
moralis quid agas;
quo tenda anagogia

But the question is simple: is the pre-critical quadriga drawn from or imposed on the Scriptures? If the former, it is legitimate. If the latter, it is eisegesis. These two are not the same. These two possibilities are not compatible. Neither is confessing Scripture's single sense and its manifold sense. Our Lord Himself states that His words are spirit and life, thus refuting the dualistic bifurcation between the literal and spiritual senses. The Quadriga must be terminated with extreme prejudice by all true believers for Biblical, rational, and confessional reasons. 

Take up and read:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL8HGMGQ?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_WTW2FHAQBB25JAGGZ304_3&bestFormat=true

Bryant Rueda, writer and preacher extraordinaire joins us to discuss his life, writing, and preaching ministry since leaving the concrete jungle in Chicago for greener pastures in Texas. Bryant is keenly interested in hermeneutics, homiletics, lay preaching, pastoral ministry, church planting, and Spanish ministry. What life experiences led Bryant to develop a love for preaching? From Five-Fold Pentecostalism to High Confessional Calvinism of the Reformed Baptist variety, Bryant cares about preachers and their training. We stir the pot on lay preaching and the spiritual formation through formal and informal education within the life of the local church. Take up and listen!

Amazon.com: Bryant Rueda: books, biography, latest update

Preaching: Discipleship One Sermon at a Time

Dear Preacher

Catechism

Previous conversations with Bryant Rueda:

Cross-Eyed Biblicism

Christ-Centered Homiletics

Straight Outta Chicago! The only Reformed Baptist rapper I know of: Regenerit! Who wudda thunk it? From writing rhymes as a young kid to a quiver full of kids, we discuss the art of rap, conversion, discipleship, church membership, family, theology, and 4 songs that showcase the artistic creativity possible when you have a passion for Christocentric expressions of faith combined with a boom bap sound! We are all about Christocentrism at Urban Puritano. Don't forget your wallet in El Segundo and enjoy!

This episode is affectionately dedicated to Carlos (last name rhymes with gorgeous)!

Dreams, visions, promptings may not be spiritual gifts, but what is their ongoing spiritual significance? Are they inherently authoritative?

Is their content veridical? How can we assess them? Do they provide infallible guidance as lesser rules of faith and practice?

Must confessional calvinists be against hyper-cessationism? Our guest, Ryan Denton, says:
“Yes!” I tend to demur and say: “If loving hyper-cessationism is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right!”

Is there divine communicative intent to dreams? Did His revelation end in the New Testament or is He still speaking to us today through our dreams, visions, and promptings?

Beginning with the premise that dreams, visions, and promptings are facts in the sense that they exist—the host explores how he assesses testimonies from the past and present of dreams, visions, promptings to the Christian life in the here and now. Join us as we scratch the surface on a disagreement on a secondary issue among brothers concerning an aspect of cessationism. If your anger and frustration levels rise, touch grass!