As To Conditions (2)

According to the Heidelberg Catechism, as we have seen, faith is never presented as a condition unto salvation, or as a condition which we must fulfill in order to enter into or remain in the covenant of God. Always it is presented as a means or instrument which is wrought in us by God and given us of Him, by which we are ingrafted into Christ, become one body with Him, and thus receive all His benefits.

April 1, 2020 Standard Bearer preview article

Sodom and Gomorrah invade Zion

The 2019 Synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) received the interim report of a committee of ten individuals that was tasked to write a “theology of human sexuality.” This is a committee that was appointed at Synod 2016 “to articulate a foundation-laying biblical theology that pays particular attention to biblical conceptions of gender and sexuality” (Acts of Synod 2016, pp. 917-19). A final report is to come before the Synod of the CRC in 2021. The reason for coming to Synod 2019 was that delegates of this past year’s Synod might give feedback for the committee in its ongoing work.

As To Conditions (1)

In his editorial in the March 15, 2020 issue of the Standard Bearer, Prof. Russell Dykstra recommended reading ‘As to Conditions,’ a series of Standard Bearer articles written by Rev. Herman Hoeksema in 1949. Over the next eleven weeks, we will be posting one article from the series each week.

This first article in the series 'As to Conditions' was written by Herman Hoeksema in the October 15, 1949 issue of the Standard Bearer.

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As the reader knows there has been, for the last year or so, a controversy in our papers about the question of conditions in the covenant of God. The question was really whether the term “condition” could be used properly in Reformed theology, and especially whether it could be used to express Protestant Reformed thought.

The controversy was introduced by the Rev. A. Petter who defended the use of the term and evidently conceived of the possibility of its being used in a sound Reformed sense. He even thinks that we need the term in order to express a necessary element in the Reformed conception of the covenant, the element of the responsibility of man.

March 15, 2020 Standard Bearer preview article

The covenant of God and our mission to the world

The covenant of God.

Our mission to the world.

How often have we thought about these highly sig­nificant biblical concepts together? How often, when discussing one, have we been led to discuss the other? How deeply has our thinking penetrated into the glorious realities and urgent callings that lie at the inter­section of these truths? It is the humble opinion of this writer that there is room for growth in our understand­ing of the relation between these marvelous truths of Scripture. The burden of this and subsequent articles will be an attempt to develop the relation between them as it is set forth in the Word of God.

Family Visitation (concluded)

The interrogation of family visiting must cover every phase of life. In addition to the civil and social sphere, discussed in our last writing, the following should be considered: 

(2) The Family Life: “Dwell on the condition of family life. Begin with the head of the family and then you might ask whether family worship is faithfully maintained, family prayers uttered, the scriptures read at stated times each day with the family and its truths commented upon and considered. If the answers to these inquiries is negative, there is room for admonition. Bind upon his heart his calling in this respect and encourage him as much as possible to fulfill it.” (G.M.O.)

Family Visitation (Method)