Imperishable Inheritance

I have decided to write down where my stud­ies of the­ol­ogy have led me other the last 2 years (1.5 as a believer). This is more for me to look back on and pro­claim, “why did I believe that?” Even though this list is bro­ken up in a sys­tem­atic form, it cer­tainly doesn’t exclude con­clu­sion made by his­tor­i­cal, prac­ti­cal, and bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy (the lat­ter being the one that has influ­enced me the most recently). I still have sem­i­nary to go! There is still so much to learn.

I know no one is going to read this so I have refrained from explain­ing all the terms; but if you have a ques­tion about what one means just ask in the comments.

God (Theology/Christology/Pneumatology)

God is tri­une expressed in three per­sons shar­ing the same essence: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is omnis­cent, omnipresent, omnipo­tent, and tran­scen­dant yet personal.

Jesus Christ is the incar­nate, pre-existent sec­ond per­son of the Trin­ity. He lived for 33.5 years ful­fill­ing the right­eous­ness required by God’s Law for sin­ners. He pos­s­esed the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Hypo­sta­tic Union where He had both a divine and human nature that were “con­joined but not con­fused.” He was arrested, tried, and cru­ci­fied only to res­ur­rect three days later. He now sits at the right hand of the Father inter­ced­ing and await­ing the final judgement.

The Holy Spirit is the regen­er­a­tive agent to God’s elect, and He pre­serves them until glo­ri­fi­ca­tion. He also inspired the Bib­li­cal writers.

Sal­va­tion (Soteriology)

Pre­des­ti­na­tion is uncon­di­tional, indi­vid­ual, and supralap­sar­ian. This also includes the decree con­cern­ing the actions and out­come of the cre­ated order. The sin­ner is brought near to God through jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone. Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion includes impu­ta­tion which is the trans­fer of the right­eous­ness of Christ to the sin­ner. The believer will perser­vere the end through the Holy Spirit. The atone­ment of Christ was def­i­nite and sub­sti­tu­tion­ary for those the Father gave to Him (the elect). The work of pre­ve­nient grace is par­tic­u­lar and not universal.

Covenants (Israel and the Church)

The Church is the “true Israel.” Gen­tiles are heirs to the Abra­hamic Covenant which was brought by Christ. The land promised to Abra­ham was fufilled in essence, dur­ing the reign of Solomon. The true “eter­nal bless­ing” promised to Abra­ham was the eter­nal state to which the Old Covenant and New Covenant believ­ers will par­take. The Holy Spirit worked as a regen­er­a­tive agent in the Old Covenant but didn’t indwell until the New Covenant.

The dichotomy of law/gospel are com­pletely anti­thet­i­cal as espoused by the Apos­tle Paul. The Mosaic Law was abol­ished with the advent of Christ. New Covenant believ­ers are bound by the com­mands on the New Covenant gospels and epis­tles. The Mosaic Law only pointed toward Christ, and was not meant to serve as (a) a means of sal­va­tion and (b) unchang­ing Law bound on believ­ers of both covenants. I believe that dis­pen­sa­tion­lists have to much dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between the covenants, and the clas­si­cal covenant the­olo­gians have too lit­tle. My posi­tion is labeled by the pop­u­lar title New Covenant The­ol­ogy.

Church (Ecclessi­ol­ogy)

The word eccle­sia is used in two senses: the body that Christ died for con­tain­ing all the believ­ers of both the new/old covenants, and the local, vis­i­ble con­gre­ga­tions. The local con­gre­ga­tions should fol­low the reg­u­la­tive prin­ci­ple (that wor­ship is lim­ited to NT com­mands), a plu­ral­ity of elders model, should admin­is­ter bap­tism, the Lord’s Sup­per, and church dis­ci­pline. Bap­tism is only to given to those who have an out­ward pro­fes­sion of faith, in the name of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and by com­plete immer­sion. I would describe myself as a “mod­er­ate ces­sa­tion­ist” regard­ing the gifts. Gifts such as heal­ing, prophetic utter­ances, and future-oriented prophecy are gone, but I have a hard time jus­tify the com­plete ces­sa­tion of gifts based solely on the Bib­li­cal account. How­ever, his­tor­i­cal the­ol­ogy definetly leans towards a ces­sa­tion­ist view.

Bibliology/Hermeneutics (Bible/Intepretation)

The Chris­t­ian scrip­tures serve as the total means of faith and author­ity. I favor the Crit­i­cal Text for­mu­lated by West­cott and Hort in the 19th cen­tury. I have high doubts on the valid­ity of the Tex­tus Recep­tus (behind the KJV/NKJV). I believe the the “anal­ogy of faith” is the best means to intepret Scrip­ture. That is, scrip­ture inteprets scrip­ture, and it is best to intepret the Old Tes­ta­ment through the New. Also, intepre­ta­tion varies from lit­eral to fig­u­ra­tive based on the sur­round­ing context.

Man (Anthro­pol­ogy)

Man is born totally depraved from the his­toric fall and Adam as our fed­eral rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Man con­sists of two parts: body and soul. Man’s free­dom is com­pat­i­ble with God’s meti­colous sov­er­eignty (not in a lib­er­tar­ian sense).

Last Things (Eschatology)

I am per­suaded by an Amil­lenial escha­tol­ogy, but I’m still work­ing this one out. The New Covenant believ­ers are under the now/not yet inau­gu­rated escha­tol­ogy. I still have to set­tle many issues in this area.

Apolo­get­ics

Who cares? Just share the gospel! Seri­ously, I am per­suaded by a pre­sup­po­si­tional apolo­getic, but I always dia­logue in the clas­si­cal method. Basi­cally, I think all five have good points (evi­den­tial really is the most Bib­li­cal), but reformed epis­te­mol­ogy has many weak­nesses (besides the sen­sus divinitatus).