By Rev. Simon Jooste As South Africa’s second-largest metropolis (after Johannesburg), Cape Town not only has a rich history but is also a melting pot of scenic views, cuisines and skin colours. She boasts incredible beauty but also thrombotic veins of prejudice and inequality, which are still fed by theContinue Reading
THE Reformed faith includes reference to total inability, unconditional election, the limited efficiency of Christ’s satisfaction, irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints not as the sum total of the church’s confession, but as elements that can be understood only in the context of a larger body of teachingContinue Reading
In this podcast, pastor and church historian R. Scott Clark talks about how Reformed Christians have thought about Christmas and why this season is both a blessing and a curse. On Christmas morning, most Christian congregations will gather for worship, but it was not always this way. Indeed, when someContinue Reading
The New Testament teaches that Jesus is the true Israel and David’s greater son (Matthew 2:15 as a fulfilment of Hosea 11:1; Acts 2:29-33, Galatians 3:16, Philippians 3:3; Hebrews 8-10 as a fulfilment of Jeremiah 31:31-34). It is in Christ’s church — as Jesus’ mystical Spirit-filled body — that weContinue Reading
Keith Getty, author of the widely sung contemporary hymn “In Christ Alone”, lamented that, in its quest for “cultural relevance”, modern worship music is “de-Christianizing people”. He said: “Over 75 percent of what are called the great hymns of the faith talk about eternity, heaven, hell, and the fact thatContinue Reading
This is the argument of my friend (you hear his voice in the introduction to the Heidelcast) Jason Estopinal. He appeals to Proverbs 10:19, 1 Thessalonians 4:11, Philippians 4:8, Proverbs 3:30 and Matthew 18 and concludes that Christians should not be fascinated by what one critic has called the “failureContinue Reading
Just pause and think of what it meant for the Lord Jesus to obey for us, in our place. For thirty years he never once said or did anything wrong. More than that, at every single moment he positively said and did exactly the right thing, in the right way,Continue Reading
[…] I dissent from Casey Chalk’s genealogy of modernity. He goes on to argue that this notion of the autonomous, emotivist self can be traced to Martin Luther. In part this is because Chalk depends upon Jacques Maritain’s Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau for his reading of Luther. Luther isContinue Reading
By Simon Jooste and Johannes Potgieter It is our opinion that the 1942 RCSA revision of Article 69 was based on a church historical hermeneutic that set the stage for her more radical revision in 2012. As described above, the decision of the 2012 Synod turned on the assumption thatContinue Reading
By Simon Jooste and Johannes Potgieter By 1930 the tide appears to have begun to change within the RCSA relative to song in corporate worship. That this shift coincided with a similar change in the convictions of Totius (as described above) should not go unnoticed. Between 1930 and 1942, theContinue Reading
By Simon Jooste and Johannes Potgieter Undisputed is the fact that the Doppers desired and realised a return to the 1619 Church Order of Dort (Louw 1999:597). Scholars are in agreement that the secession of the VGK from the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk (NHK) had much to do with what wasContinue Reading
By Simon Jooste and Johannes Potgieter The question of driving concern in this article is whether there are historical–theological reasons to critique the 2012 Reformed Churches in South Africa (RCSA) Synod decision to revise Article 69 of the church order to read as follows (RCSA 2012): [I]n the churches onlyContinue Reading