Christ the Center

Hebrews 6 has been a challenging passage to interpret for ages. What does it mean to fall away? What is the specific nature of the apostasy? Do majority interpretations do justice to all the features of the text?

Camden Bucey and Jim Cassidy discuss Lamentations, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Camden recently wrote a 12-week study on the books for Crossway's Knowing the Bible series.

Alan Strange speaks about the doctrine of the spirituality of the church in the ecclesiology of Charles Hodge and how it was formed in the years leading up to and during the American Civil War. Dr. Strange's dissertation on the topic has been published in P&R Publishing's Reformed Academic Dissertations series as The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge. Dr. Strange previously addressed the topic in episode 443 of Christ the Center, but in this episode, we focus more on the Presbyterian General Assemblies and how they wrestled with the theological and political issues surrounding the war.

Vos Group takes an excursus to discuss Vos's Reformed Dogmatics. In this series, like all of his works, Vos presents the "deeper Protestant conception" of covenantal union and communion with the Triune God. We discuss how the immutable Creator does n

In this episode, we answer questions from our listeners and discuss a few things we've been contemplating recently. We discuss a proposed reading list for the works of Cornelius Van Til, worshiping in Sunday, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and African worldview and theology. It's a wide-ranging conversation and one we hope you enjoy. Dissertations/Theses Mentioned Leonardo de Chirico, Evangelical theological perspectives on post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism Trevor H. G. Smith, Christian Theology Emerging from the Akan Single-Tiered Unitive Perspective on Reality

Eden and Canaan are earthly projections that both reveal yet veil the glory of the heavenly dwelling place of God. Had Adam passed probation, he would have been translated into the highest heavens in the presence of God where he would enter Sabbath Rest (Genesis 2/Ez. 28:14 and the mountain of God). When Christ finished his wilderness sojourn, he ascended into that very reality of Sabbath Rest—rest the first Adam did not enter (Heb. 1:3; 8:2, 5; 9:23–24; 10:12; 12:24; 4:9–10). Christ, as ascended, has entered rest—a rest he in the process of conferring on the church in this age (4:3) and will bring to consummation in the age to come (4:9–11). The whole point of the land of Canaan in Hebrews—the way it relates to this big-picture creational concern—is that it was a place of rest (Psalm 95:7–11 is quoted in Hebrews 3:7–11). Israel was seeking to leave the wilderness and enter into the “rest” of God in Canaan. Canaan was a local, earthly expression of a corresponding heavenly Sabbath Rest (95:11/Genesis 2:2 as the two theme texts in Hebrews 3 and 4). Canaan was an earthly type of Sabbath Rest, and some in Israel failed to enter the earthly typical land of rest because they lacked faith in the promised Messiah (Heb. 3:19). In a parallel way, the author of Hebrews grounds his exhortation that the church in this age press on to Sabbath Rest by faith in the ascended Messiah, so that none of us fail to enter that Rest.

Dr. Vern Poythress speaks with us about his book, Theophany: A Biblical Theology of God's Appearing, published by Crossway. Each time God appears to his people throughout the Bible—in the form of a thunderstorm, a man, a warrior, a chariot, etc.—he comes to a specific person for a specific purpose. And each of these temporary appearances— called theophanies—helps us to better understand who he is, anticipating his climactic, permanent self-revelation in the incarnation of Christ. Describing the various accounts of God’s visible presence from Genesis to Revelation, Dr. Poythress helps us consider more deeply what they reveal about who God is and how he dwells with us today. We also spoke about the upcoming Westminster Conference on Science & Faith to be held  April 6–7, 2018 at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (see map). They will explore the relationship between theistic evolution and the Christian faith. Register at wcosaf.com. Dr. Poythress is Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pennsylvania.

Michael J. Kruger joins us to speak about his book Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church.

Jim Cassidy discusses Darren O Sumner's book, Karl Barth and the Incarnation.

We continue our #VosGroup series in pages 174–175 of Vos' book Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments to consider totemism and Vos's deep critique of biblicistic modernism.