RFPA Blog News

MP3 of Third Radio Interview with Professor Engelsma

If you did not have an opportunity to listen in on Monday, you can do so now by clicking the link below. Yesterday, on November 27, Prof. David J. Engelsma had a radio interview with Chris Arnzen, the national, religious radio host of Iron Sharpens Iron. This was the third interview on a book that Engelsma authored, Gospel Truth of Justification: Proclaimed, Defended, Developed. This interview was of special significance since this year is the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation and this book was...

TODAY! Radio Interview with Professor David J. Engelsma on Gospel Truth of Justification

  Today from 4-6 pm EST, Prof. David J. Engelsma will be interviewed by Christopher Amzen on his radio program “Iron Sharpens Iron." The subject will be his recent book, Gospel Truth of Justification. Visit www.ironsharpensironradio.com and click on live stream to tune in and listen from any device. The program can also be listened to by phone (563)999-9206, following the prompts and press #3 for Christian Radio.       Be sure to tune in later today. You don't want to miss it!  

Gospel Truth of Justification (6): Polemical and Necessary

Ending last time with the fact that the author of Gospel Truth of Justification both necessarily and properly engages in polemics, we now briefly consider the heresies refuted and contradicted.

God used the sixteenth-century Reformation to deliver his church from the deadly heresy of justification partly by faith in Christ and partly by the good works of the sinner. This heresy Rome vigorously maintains to this day. Not many years after the Reformation, the doctrine of justification by faith alone again came under attack by James Arminius and his followers. Originating within the Reformed churches and more subtle than the Romish corruption of justification, the Arminian position is “justification by work. The work is faith” (p. 10). Even worse,

“works of obedience to the law are not excluded from the Arminian doctrine of justification. As the Canons remark, the Arminian doctrine of justification is that God “regards faith itself and the obedience of faith” as the sinner’s righteousness. The “obedience of faith” is the good works that faith performs.

Therefore, justification for Arminianism is by works, with a vengeance. Arminianism’s doctrine is worse than Rome’s (p. 10).

The current threat to the doctrine of justification by faith alone in “conservative” Reformed churches is the federal vision, which bears the marks of both the Romish and Arminian subversion of justification. Federal vision theologians profess a “concern” for holiness. Their fear is antinomianism. Engelsma explains leading federal vision proponent Norman Shepherd’s solution:

Already in the preface of his book [The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism], Shepherd is wondering “where and how,” in light of the Reformed faith’s confession of salvation by grace, “does human responsibility enter in?” “Human responsibility” for Shepherd is conditions that humans must perform and upon which the covenant of God and its promises of salvation depend: “conditions were, indeed, attached to the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham.” Only a conditional covenant with a conditional salvation can ward off the threatening evil of antinomianism. Only the preaching of a conditional covenant enables the Reformed preacher to “preach grace without being antinomian” (p. 431).

A conditional covenant means conditional justification. Writes Shepherd, “Faith, repentance, obedience, and perseverance are indispensable to the enjoyment of these blessings [of the new covenant]. They are conditions” (The Call of Grace, p. 50). Explaining Shepherd’s position, Engelsma writes,

Faith and its works are the condition fulfilled by the sinner in order to receive and retain his justification, because faith and its good works are the “condition to be met for the fulfillment of [the] promise [of the covenant]" (p. 277).

Engelsma views the federal vision as “the most serious assault on the gospel of justification probably since the time of the Reformation.” Adding to the seriousness of this threat is the fact that “the enemy is within. It appears, launches its attack, and is protected and defended within the Reformed and Presbyterian churches that have a reputation for orthodoxy, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America among others” (p. xiv). Elsewhere in the book, Engelsma identifies the United Reformed Churches who “have had advocates of the federal vision arise in their bosom without disciplining the heretics, indeed in at least one instance exonerating the federal visionist” (pp. 480, 481).

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Third Radio Interview on Gospel Truth of Justification with Professor David J. Engelsma

  This coming Monday, November 27, Prof. David J. Engelsma will be interviewed by Christopher Amzen on his radio program “Iron Sharpens Iron” from 4-6 pm EST.  The subject will be his recent book, Gospel Truth of Justification. Visit www.ironsharpensironradio.com and click on the livestream box to tune in and listen from any device. The program can also be listened to by phone at (563)999-9206; press #3 for Christian Radio when prompted. Be sure to tune in Monday!  

MP3 of Radio Interview with Professor Engelsma on 'Gospel Truth of Justification' is now available!

Last week Thursday, November 16, Prof. David J. Engelsma had a radio interview with Chris Arnzen, the national, religious radio host of Iron Sharpens Iron. This was the second interview on a book that Engelsma authored, Gospel Truth of Justification: Proclaimed, Defended, Developed. This interview was of special significance since this year is the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation and this book was especially was intended by the Reformed Free Publishing Association and the author to celebrate that glorious work of Christ....

Gospel Truth of Justification (5): Polemical

The apostle Paul, after addressing the churches of Galatia in verses 1-5, immediately administers a rebuke to them with the expression, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:6, 7). John Calvin, commenting on verse six of this opening chapter of Galatians, observes that the apostle Paul’s “greatest...

TODAY! Radio Interview with Professor David J. Engelsma on Gospel Truth of Justification

Today from 4-6 pm EST, Prof. David J. Engelsma will be interviewed by Christopher Amzen on his radio program “Iron Sharpens Iron." The subject will be his recent book, Gospel Truth of Justification. Visit www.ironsharpensironradio.com and click on live stream to tune in and listen from any device. The program can also be listened to by phone (563)999-9206, following the prompts and press #3 for Christian Radio.       Be sure to tune in later today. You don't want to miss it!  

Second Radio Interview on Gospel Truth of Justification with Professor David J. Engelsma

  This week Thursday, November 16 (note the date change), Prof. David J. Engelsma will be interviewed by Christopher Amzen on his radio program “Iron Sharpens Iron” from 4-6 pm EST.  He will also be interviewed on Monday, November 27, from 4-6 pm EST. The subject for both of these interviews will be Professor Engelsma’s recent book, the Gospel Truth of Justification and they will build on Mr. Arnzen’s previous interview of Professor Engelsma in September 2017. You can go to...

Gospel Truth of Justification (4): Instructive

Good sermons edify. That is, they are instructive and spiritually build up the hearers. When, according to their professors, students in the Protestant Reformed Theological School are deemed ready, they are licensed to speak a word of edification in the churches. When sermon critic committees bring their reports to synod regarding the sermons given by seminarians at their synodical exams, a judgment is made whether or not the sermons are edifying. A primary responsibility of elders in their oversight of the...

Gospel Truth of Justification - A Review (3): Comforting and Confessional

Last time we ended intending to take up the matter of assurance of justification. To doubt whether one is justified is to doubt whether one is saved. In the name of a “quest for full assurance,” reputedly Reformed theologians promote a doctrine of doubt.[i] These reputedly Reformed theologians promote the Puritan and nadere reformatie (further reformation) theology of doubt. They deny that faith is, essentially, assurance. I quote again from Mark Jones' book, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest, on the topic of...

Gospel Truth of Justification - A Review (2): Comforting

Another aspect of the truth of justification by faith alone as proclaimed, defended, and developed in this book, is the comfort that it brings to the believing child of God. Corruptions of justification by faith alone make light of man's sinfulness and “the awesome holiness of God” (p. 489). Engelsma paints a vivid picture of “standing before the holy God in judgment according to divine justice” (p. 489). One who contemplates standing before the holy God in judgment according to divine...

Gospel Truth of Justification - A Review (1): Timely

With the recent publication of Gospel Truth of Justification: Proclaimed, Defended, Developed by David J. Engelsma, the Reformed Free Publishing Association has sent a bold witness of the truth of justification by faith alone into the world. This witness comes particularly to the Reformed church world, both to true and apostatizing churches. God will always have witness to his truth, even to the very end of the world. As apostasy in the church world increases, the witness of the true church...

In review: Gospel Truth of Justification

Gospel Truth of Justification: Proclaimed, Defended, Developed, David J. Engelsma. Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2017, 528 pages. Reviewed by Rev. John Marcus. Who would have thought that the gospel truth of justification by faith alone would be under attack today in churches that have their heritage in the Protestant Reformation? Yet Engelsma makes plain that such is exactly the case, even as we celebrate the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. The current controversy concerning justification is so critical to the gospel...

AUDIO & VIDEO of the RFPA Annual Meeting 2017

2017 RFPA Annual Meeting "After 500  Years: What about James on Justification?"Prof. David J. Engelsma Date given: 09-28-2017 Location: Southwest Protestant Reformed Church (Wyoming, MI) NOTE: The audio recording ends after the secretary report. However, the video is a recording of the entire meeting. Free Audio Download Free Video