Over the weekend our presbytery met in Traverse City at Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA). In addition to our regular business was a pre-assembly meeting with Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary in California. He spoke three times on, "The Mission and the Marks", "The Joy of Being Confessional", and the sermon during our worship entitled "Stupidity, Sophistication and Sovereignty" based on I Corinthians 1:18-21. All three messages can be down-loaded at no cost from Redeemer PCA - Sermons. We also enjoyed a wonderful Q & A time on Saturday morning over breakfast.
The first message is a good summary of the Emerging Church, the Emergent Church (a different movement) as compared to the Reformed tradition. One thing I learned about the former movement was its strong resemblance to the Pietistic movement of the 18th century where subjective religious experience trumps objective theology and piety.The latter movement is more radical with people challenging core doctrines like atonment for sin (which has been likened to 'cosmic child abuse' by one writer).
The second message expounded two themes prevalent in the church today: QIRC - Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty and QIRE - Quest for Illigitimate Religious Experience. Both are explained at length in his book, Recovering the Reformed Confessions: Our Theology, Piety and Practice (it can be ordered here). Woven into both messages is a confessional response to the trends running in the evangelical church today.
The third message was a sermon on the foolishness of the cross and how offensive that message was and remains so today. Yet it is mankind's only hope to be reconciled to a holy God.
Download the messages and feed your soul.
2 comments:
Hi Dave,
Glad my colleague was a blessing to you! Hope the studies are going well.
Hi Danny! Good to hear from you. My studies are going well though I am taking a breather this fall. I really enjoyed meeting Dr. Clark and learning from him. His book is next on my list to read.
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