- Living with a Reformed Baptist family, as I have been doing, has given me the chance to exercise some discussion on the topic of baptism. In that discussion it has become increasingly clear to me why Reformed Theology in general and Christian Reconstruction in particular are not really winning the intellectual war. They certainly win some of the skirmishes, but the war itself is far from over. And it will remain so until the unassailable Word of God is brought to bear on the enemy. Here’s the problem.
In my discussions with my host it was evident that he relied completely on a New Testament theology. No matter how many times I tried to get the discussion going from the Old Testament, my host would say words like, “That’s fine, but the New Testament says . . .” And off he would go quoting the New Testament.
As I thought about this, I realized something that had not been so clear before. It was the willingness of my host to hold not just to the Bible in general, but to the idea in particular that irrespective of what might be taught in the Old Testament, the New Testament now offered a “correction” to the older Testament.
Unequal Testaments — Ian Hodge - Read more: Condition and Prospects of Protestantism — J.A. Froude
- Perfectionism and Bubble Theology — Ian Hodge
- State of Affairs — Ian Hodge
- The Church and Humanism — Otto Scott
IN one of the western counties, the writer of this paper was recently
present at an evening Evangelical prayer-meeting. The congregation
were partly church-goers, partly dissenters of various denominations,
united for the time by the still active revivalist excitement. Some were
highly educated men and women farmers, tradesmen, servants, sailors, and
fishermen made up the rest: all were representative specimens of
Evangelical Christians, passionate doctrinalists, convinced that they, and
only they, possessed the ‘Open Sesame’ of heaven, but doing credit to their
faith by inoffensive, if not useful, lives. One of them, who took a leading
part in the proceedings, was a person of large fortune, who was devoting
his money, time, and talents to what he called the truth. Another was well
known through two counties as a hard-headed, shrewd, effective man of
business; a stern, but on the whole, and as times went, a beneficent despot
over many thousands of unmanageable people.
The services consisted of a series of addresses from different speakers,
interchanged with extempore prayers, directed rather to the audience than
to the Deity. At intervals, the congregation sung hymns, and sung them
particularly well. The teaching was of the ordinary kind expressed only with
more than usual distinctness.