“When God gives orders and tells us what will happen if we fail to obey those orders perfectly, that is in the category of what the reformers, following the biblical text, called law. When God promises freely, providing for us because of Christ’s righteousness the status he demands of us, this is in the category of gospel. It is good news from start to finish. The Bible includes both, and the reformers were agreed that the Scriptures taught clearly that the law, whether Old or New Testament commands, was not eliminated for the believer (those from a Dispensational background may notice a difference here). Nevertheless, they insisted that nothing in this category of law could be a means of justification or acceptance before a holy God … The law comes, not to reform the sinner nor to show him or her the “narrow way” to life, but to crush the sinner’s hopes of escaping God’s wrath through personal effort or even cooperation. All of our righteousness must come from someone else-someone who has fulfilled the law’s demands. Only after we have been stripped of our “filthy rags” of righteousness (Isa. 64:6)- our fig leaves through which we try in vain to hide our guilt and shame-can we be clothed with Christ’s righteousness. First comes the law to proclaim judgment and death, then the gospel to proclaim justification and life. One of the clearest presentations of this motif is found in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. In the sixteenth century, the issue of law and grace was more clearly dealt with than at almost any other time since the apostles.”
- Modern Reformation Good News: The Gospel for Christians (May/June 2003)

Collin Hansen has been getting a lot of press on the internet since his book Young, Restless, Reformed, A Journalists Journey with the New Calvanists hit the streets. The Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School hosted an interview between Hansen and Dr. Doug Sweeney, director of the Henry Center at Trinity to discuss some of Hansen’s discoveries, and how we can use this information as we move forward.

During the interview Hansen answers some intriguing questions about how he sees the young ‘reformed’ generation taking their theological understanding and putting it to action. Ironically (as I type about his book on a blog) he answers a question on how much he thinks the internet and blogs such as this one, impact they way people of younger generations are developing their theological understandings.

Henry Center Interview w/ Collin Hansen

Found via New City Church Blog

    In our first podcast the guys mentioned John Piper and DesiringGod.org as an excellent resource for people searching for more on Reformed or Calvanistic theology.  Just recently Piper has posted a 9 part audio/video series on his website where he unpacks, 1 by 1,   each of the 5 points of Calvanism.  Piper has gone through this before, in detail, in his writing “What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism”  but now we have it again, this time from a recent seminar produced for the Bethlehem Institute.

Click here for TULIP, Part 1: Introduction

Also check out our active discussion of TULIP on our Facebook groups page.