Christ the Center

Mark Bube and Kurt Vetterli speak today about ecumenism and inter-church relations. Mark Bube, general secretary of foreign missions in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, plays an important part in the OPC’s ecumenism because the OPC collaborates with other NAPARC denominations in foreign missions, supporting the missionaries of other denominations and receiving support for their own missiona...

Dr. Alan Strange comes to the program to discuss the  animus imponentis. Animus imponentis  is a legal term that refers to the meaning of the words of an oath or confession that is intended by the body imposing the oath or confession. The concept clarifies what it means for officers of a modern church to subscribe to a confession composed by men who lived several centuries ago. On today’s ep...

Dr. Lane Tipton returns to Christ the Center for the sixth episode of Vos Group, concerning the second half of chapter three of Geerhardus Vos’  Biblical Theology   (pp. 33-40). Vos established in the previous chapter the presence of special revelation in the garden of Eden, in the probationary covenant of works. In this chapter, he highlights four principles made known in the covenant, the...

Today we welcome to the program hip-hop recording artist Shai Linne to speak about his brand new album  Lyrical Theology: Doxology , part two of a three-part hip-hop album series. Shai’s album is based on the conviction that all thinking about God should lead to worship of him. Our discussion covers cultural engagement and contextualization, with Shai’s music as a prime example, as wel...

Dr. William Edgar discusses the question, How Did Evil Come Into the World? , which is also the title of his recent addition to the Christian Answers to Hard Questions series. Today’s conversation covers the same territory as the booklet, how a good God can be the creator and sovereign of a world now filled with evil, and how scientific developments related to Darwinism and evolution challen...

Dr. David Garner comes to the program to speak about the topic of his new booklet, “How Can I Know For Sure?” from the  Christian Answers to Hard Questions   Series, published by P&R Publishing. Church members and especially college students are breathing in the air of popular postmodernism, and the question of certainty requires an answer. Dr. Garner argues that to find answers we...

Dr. Vern S. Poythress, Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA, speaks about his new book,  Chance and the Sovereignty of God: A God-Centered Approach to Probability and Random Events  (Crossway). The fifth in a series of “God-Centered Approaches,” Chance and the Sovereignty of God explores the mathematics of probability as well...

For the fifth episode of Vos Group, Dr. Lane Tipton and Camden Bucey examine the first portion of chapter three of Geerhardus Vos’  Biblical Theology   (pp. 27-33). Vos has established the presence of special revelation in the garden of Eden, God’s words to Adam and Eve concerning the probationary covenant of works. In this chapter, he highlights four principles made known in this spec...

Today we speak with Glen Clary about his DMin dissertation titled, “Celebrating Holy Communion According to the Customs of the Ancient Church: A Reformed Communion Liturgy Based on the Eucharistic Liturgy of the  Didache .” The  Didache  is a very early document that teaches about several important topics, including the early church’s observance of the Lord’s Supper. Listen...

Dr. Randall J. Pederson offers a helpful method for resolving the perennial challenge of defining Puritanism. Pederson suggests that Wittgenstein’s concept of familienähnlichkeit  (family resemblance) provides a perspective “that within seventeenth-century English Puritanism there is a unitas  and a  diversitas  that, when considered together, suggest a  unitas in diversitate  that war...

Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, and Jim Cassidy discuss John Murray’s article, “ Who Raised Up Jesus? ” from The Westminster Theological Journal 3.2 (May 1941): 113–123. An answer to Murray’s question requires a search of the biblical text, an analysis of Greek grammar, a discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity—in short, the use of all the resources that Christian students...

This fourth episode of  Vos Group , Dr. Lane Tipton and Camden Bucey tackle chapter 2 of Geerhardus Vos’s  Biblical Theology   (pp. 19-26). Topics of discussion include the relationship of general/natural and special/supernatural revelation, sin and revelation, and divine covenants. Roughly each month, Lane and Camden will work through the pages of Vos’  Biblical Theology . While Vos’ book is foun...

Matt Perman is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way We Work ,  a book about productivity and the stewardship of time and work. Matt highlights all the good that can be gained from the literature on business and productivity, showing how the best principles observed by secular thinkers conform to the pattern of biblical teaching. Of course, the gospel  the world d...

Reformed Forum founders Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy, and Jeff Waddington speak about the Old and New Calvinisms. As the speaker for the annual Gaffin lecture, John Piper recently spoke at Westminster Theological Seminary (PA) on the topic, “The New Calvinism and the New Community.” The New Calvinism, a cross-denominational movement, recaptures many elements of the Old, but the two differ...

Jeffrey A. Stivason speaks about B.B. Warfield’s doctrine of inspiration. In his doctoral dissertation,  From Inscrutability to Concursus: Benjamin B. Warfield’s Theological Construction of Inspiration’s Mode from 1880 to 1915 . ,  Pastor Stivason highlights the development over time of Warfield’s articulation of inspiration. While Warfield’s influence on the contempo...

Justin Taylor joins us to speak about  The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived , which he has coauthored with Dr. Andreas Köstenberger. Mr. Taylor speaks about the book not only as an author but also as a publisher and editor at Crossway Books. The conversation highlights the format of the book, the gap the book fills in the literature on Easter...

Dr. James N. Anderson speaks about his recent book  What’s Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions , published by Crossway. The book takes the reader through important theological and philosophical questions in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style, leading to a label and description of the reader’s own worldview. Dr. Anderson explains the setup...

Today’s panel recently attended the 2014 Desiring God Pastors’ Conference titled, “The Pastor, the Vine, and the Branches: The Remarkable Reality of Union with Christ,” as representatives for Reformed Forum and Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, PA. The group speaks about the opportunity to spread the ministry of Reformed Forum beyond the bounds of Presbyterian...

For the third episode of Vos Group , Dr. Lane Tipton joins Camden Bucey to discuss the final portion of the first chapter of Geerhardus Vos’s Biblical Theology (pp. 11-18, “Guiding Principles” through the end of ch. 1). Vos’s view of biblical authority governs his method of studying Scripture and particularly the use he makes of knowledge of the biblical authors’ hist...

Dr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. joins us to speak about his book  By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation ,  now in its second edition and published by P&R Publishing. This study in Paul’s theology begins with the recognition that what is of first importance for Paul is the history of salvation, Christ crucified and raised. But the history of redemption does not exclude the app...

Dr. Michael J. Kruger speaks with Christ the Center about his recent book,  The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate .  The book deals not with why we have the books we do in the canon but with the question of the very definition of “canon” and the origin of the idea. Contemporary biblical scholars insist that the idea of canon was a late developmen...

On the sixth anniversary of Christ the Center,  we respond to listener feedback with the original contributors. Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy, and Camden Bucey speak about a variety of subjects, including the corporate and individual aspects of life in Israel, the republication of the Covenant of Works in the Mosaic economy, and suggested single-volume systematic theologies. Links An Introduction t...

David Owen Filson speaks about Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, theologian and former president of Wheaton College and Covenant College and Seminary. A fundamentalist involved with J. Gresham Machen in the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Buswell joined the Bible Presbyterian Church when it split with the fledgling OPC over premilennialism and teetotalism. He continued to be an interlocutor wit...

Dr. Lane Tipton and Camden Bucey open up Geerhardus Vos’  Biblical Theology  for the second episode of Vos Group . On pages 3-11 (Chapter 1 up to, but not including, “Guiding Principles”), Vos sets out the nature of the discipline of biblical theology and its relationship to the different departments of theology. In short, biblical theology is a study of the history of...

We begin the New Year with a look at some of our best clips from 2013. Listen to the full episodes of the clips we’ve chosen to include by using the following links: Ep. 265 – Gospels Harmonization with Vern Poythress Ep. 267 – The Reorganization of Old Princeton with Darryl G. Hart Ep. 268 – Regeneration and Redemption-History with Scott Wright Ep. 270 – Calvin’s Com...