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Sometimes you hear people talking about the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC). You don't have to care.

It is not a church. It has no authority. It has no status.

NAPARC is an umbrella of small churches, plus the PCA and her 400,000 members. Some leaders in the OPC, URCNA, and the rest feel like they are part of something more significant by this connection.

NAPARC's perceived importance is based entirely on formal ties to the PCA, which is usually unenthusiastic about the group. The name has become a synonym for "Reformed churches" for some. I wish people who know better would stop doing that.

Eventually the PCA will quit NAPARC and the whole thing will likely disband. Let it go. @Presbyterianism

The history of philosophy began with naturalism, and, so far as this volume is concerned, it ends with naturalism.

The Presocratic naturalism dissolved into Sophism, from which a metaphysics arose; and the metaphysics lost itself in a mystic trance. Then under the influence of an alien source, Western Europe appealed to a divine revelation. In the sixteenth century one group put their complete trust in revelation, while another development turned to unaided human reason.

This latter movement has now abandoned its metaphysics, its rationalism, and even the fixed truths of naturalistic science. It has dissolved into Sophism. Does this mean that philosophers and cultural epochs are nothing but children who pay their fare to take another ride on the merry-go-round? Is this Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence? Or, could it be that a choice must be made between skeptical futility and a Word from God?

To answer this question for himself, the student, since he cannot ride very fast into the future and discover what a new age will do, might begin by turning back to the first page and pondering the whole thing over again. This will at least stave off suicide for a few days more.

That's the ending to Gordon Clark's philosophy text, Thales to Dewey.

It is one of the few memorable passages in any piece of presuppositionalist writing. In fact, there is a legend that a certain seminary professor killed himself because he didn't want to "stave off suicide" anymore.

Clark's philosophy was horribly, magnificently wrong. His Scripturalism meant that you can't know anything exists if it isn't in Scripture. He and his publicist John Robbins were also dedicated supporters of Cold War neoliberalism.

For holding a belief system that denies the light of nature in Scripture and tradition, Clarkians tend to be overconfident in their own orthodoxy. Largely this is due to their Van Tillian opponents typically being perceived as worse than them.

The light of Scripture demands rejecting both sets of squabbling, now geriatric, presuppositionalists. @Presbyterianism

Dysfunctional Female Officers, amirite? 🤡@Presbyterianism

Lord's Day 04

Ezekiel 18
Jeremiah 9
Matthew 9:1-13
2 Thessalonians 1
Psalm 85 (for singing)

Aids:
Heidelberg Catechism: Q. 9-11
Westminster Confession: Ch. 6
Larger Catechism: Q. 20-23
Belgic Confession: Art. 16
Canons of Dordt: Second Head, Articles 1-2
Second Helvetic Confession: Ch. 10
Calvin's Institutes: Book 2, ch. 3

An updated reading plan with 365 daily Bible readings is posted here. Follow at your own pace.

There's a mirror channel @RefReading just for the Lord's Day readings, with one post a week on Saturdays.

"How do I know I belong to Jesus?" There needs to be more clarity out there about the doctrine of assurance. If you need help, please read the classic book on assurance by Louis Berkhof.

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thes. 5:23 @Presbyterianism

Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Ezekiel 18:4

Sin [is] the only cause of men’s destruction.

It is true, there is an infallibility of consequence upon reprobation, that all such as are under that decree will die, but they do not die because they were reprobated, but because they sinned. And were it not so, revenging justice would not be manifested in this.

For justice appears in rewarding men according to their doings, referring to the law under which they are. That justice then may take place, it must appear that the man really deserves the penalty which is inflicted on him. Now this desert arises from the nature and merit of sin.

The man therefore must be a sinner before he can be justly damned; and if he be so, he then rightly deserves it. (Rom. 6:23, Gen. 2:17, Rom. 5:12.) -Samuel Willard @Presbyterianism

The RPCNA fired and excommunicated Samuel Ketcham today on charges of racism.

In the indictment, the former Fresno pastor was quoted as saying God created races with natural inequalities and gifts. He also holds to the view that civilizations are divided according to the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Other condemned statements concern nature, not theology: Ketcham suggests that different racial groups are best suited to specific roles in society. He also asserts that White people developed the most dominant cultures.

The RPCNA claims these views violate the 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 9th commandments. The outcome was predictable.

For generations, the RPs were McMillanite Covenanters, an extreme separatist group that renounced the US Constitution and claimed to be the only true church on Earth. In the 1800s, they slowly traded all that for a public stance of do-gooder moral scolding: women's rights, abolition and prohibition. They backed John Brown in the 19th Century and MLK in the 20th.

Yet the RPs maintained a public image as orthodox for one reason: They kept exclusive psalmody after everyone else abandoned it. Over the years, they attracted conservatives (including J.G. Vos, son of the great theologian) with mixed results. At the pew level, the confusion is on par with that of the PCA.

Ketcham might have avoided this conflict. Knowing the RPs would not listen, he could have quietly transferred out.

I've never met the man. At this point, he may try to continue the ministry independently. @Presbyterianism

Silicon Sunday School: Lord's Day 4

Lord’s Day 4
9. Q. Does not God, then, wrong man by requiring of him in his law that which he cannot perform?
A. Not at all; for God made man capable of performing it; but man, through the instigation of the devil, by his own willful disobedience, deprived himself and all his posterity of these gifts.

10. Q. Will God suffer such disobedience and apostasy to go unpunished?
A. By no means; but he is terribly displeased with our original as well as actual sins; and will punish them by a just judgment temporally and eternally, as he has declared, Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.

11. Q. Is, then, God not also merciful?
A. God is indeed merciful, but he is also just; therefore his justice requires that sin which is committed against the most high majesty of God, be also punished with extreme, that is, with everlasting punishment of body and soul.

Robert Wolgemuth, a kingmaker within American Evangelicalism, has died. He helped a bunch of Christian celebrities build their media careers.

While I have no idea of his beliefs, he certainly did plenty to nudge Evangelicalism from bad to worse.

His widow is Nancy DeMoss; they were only married about two months. She is a self-proclaimed Bible teacher with her own parachurch. x.gd/ucUiV @Presbyterianism

An agitator "continued to scream in the faces of young children while they were crying."

See the whole thread here: archive.is/SvWNw @Presbyterianism

🙄 @Presbyterianism

On Sacramental Efficacy

The Reformed deny:

1.) That they confer grace as an opusoperatum [based on the virtue of the work].

The Reformed affirm:

2.) That they convey no grace to the unworthy recipient.
3.) That their efficacy is not of the mere moral power of the truth they symbolize.
4.) That they do really confer grace upon the worthy recipient.
5.) But they do this instrumentally, because the supernatural efficiency is not due to them, nor to him that administers them, but to the Holy Spirit who as a free personal agent uses them sovereignly as his instruments to do his will (virtus Spiritus Sancti extrinsicus accedens).
6.) That as seals of the covenant of grace they convey and confirm grace to those to whom it belongs, i.e., that is to those who are within that covenant, and in the case of adults, only through a living faith.
7.) That the grace conferred by the sacraments often is conferred upon true believers before and without their use. AA Hodge @Presbyterianism

Ye is sorry. Real sorry.

The former Kanye West regrets his Hollywood Nazi gimmick. He blames it on bipolar disorder and a head injury.

Now notice what his full-page WSJ ad doesn't mention: Christianity. @Presbyterianism

🙄 @Presbyterianism