by Richard Barcellos | Dec 23, 2010 | Ecclesiology, Practical Theology
The questions below were formulated by the late Roger Nicole. Really good stuff to which I need to take heed. Thanks to D. Scott Meadows for sending the article to me. I plan on reading it on the plane in route to CA.
“There are three major questions that we must ask; and I would like to emphasize very strongly that, in my judgment, we need to ask them precisely in the right order: (1) What do I owe the person who differs from me? (2) What can I learn from the person who differs from me? (3) How can I cope with the person who differs from me?”
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
by Richard Barcellos | Dec 23, 2010 | Biblical Theology, Books, Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, Historical Theology, New Testament, Old Testament
Nehemiah Coxe was a Particular Baptist.[1] Coxe is an important figure for contemporary, confessional Reformed Baptists for at least three reasons: (1) he was the co-editor (and most likely the “senior” editor) of the Particular Baptist Second London Confession of Faith (2nd LCF);[2] (2) he agreed with John Owen and other seventeenth-century Reformed orthodox theologians on the function of the covenant of works in redemptive history as it related to the Mosaic covenant;[3] and (3) he authored A Discourse of the Covenants that God made with men before the Law…, which is structured after the federal model, utilizes Reformed orthodox theological nomenclature, concepts, and sources, and is semantically Reformed orthodox, except portions of his exposition of the Abrahamic covenant(s).[4] These reasons for Coxe’s importance should force contemporary, confessional Reformed Baptists to ask themselves if Coxe’s theology is their theology. Since Coxe played a major role in the formulation of the 2nd LCF and since his federalism is clear and in substantial agreement with the federal theology of his day, then, if contemporary, confessional Reformed Baptists confess the things most surely believed among us, then shouldn’t they confess Coxe’s federalism?
[1] For a brief biography cf. James M. Renihan, “An Excellent and Judicious Divine: Nehemiah Coxe” in Nehemiah Coxe and John Owen, edited by Ronald D. Miller, James M. Renihan, and Francisco Orozco, Covenant Theology From Adam to Christ (Owensboro, KY: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2005), 7-24; James M. Renihan, “Confessing the Faith in 1644 and 1689” in RBTR, III:1 (July 2006): 33ff.; and Michael A. G. Haykin, Kiffin, Knollys and Keach (Leeds, England: Reformation Today Trust, 1996) for an introduction to three key Particular Baptists of the seventeenth century.
[2] Cf. Renihan, “An Excellent and Judicious Divine: Nehemiah Coxe,” 19-21 and Renihan, “Confessing the Faith in 1644 and 1689,” 33ff.
[3] Cf. Richard C. Barcellos, “John Owen and New Covenant Theology…” in Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 353-54. Coxe himself defers to Owen in Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 30.
[4] Cf. Coxe and Owen, Covenant Theology, 71-140.
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
by Richard Barcellos | Dec 23, 2010 | Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, Historical Theology, New Testament, Old Testament
Part I: The Perpetuity of the Decalogue under the New Covenant in Owen and Others
Part II: Matthew 5:17 and the Perpetuity of the Decalogue under the New Covenant in Owen and Others
Part III: The Multi-functional Utility of the Decalogue in Owen and Others
Part IV: The Idea of Abrogation in Owen and Others
Conclusion
What can we conclude in light of the evidence presented?
· Owen in the context of his own writings
Primary source documentation of Owen has been presented on (1) the perpetuity of the entire Decalogue from Jer. 31:33 and 2 Co. 3:3, (2) Matt. 5:17 as it relates to the perpetuity of the Decalogue under the New Covenant, (3) the multi-functional utility of the Decalogue and (4) abrogation. Examining Owen on these subjects put us both into the primary documents themselves and within Owen’s systematic thought on relevant theological issues. This was necessary in order to understand him on the primary issue under investigation.
Owen’s view of abrogation must be carefully qualified, especially as it relates to the Decalogue and the New Covenant. On the one hand, he viewed the Decalogue as abrogated under the New Covenant. But he viewed it abrogated in terms of its function under the Old Covenant and along with the rest of the Old Covenant’s law. His view of the abrogation of the Decalogue was not absolute, but relative. It concerned a specific redemptive-historical function of the Decalogue and not all redemptive-historical functions.
On the other hand, Owen did not view the Decalogue as abrogated under the New Covenant. He viewed it as perpetual because it contains “the sum and substance of that obedience which is due unto God from all rational creatures made in his image.”[1]
These distinctions in his views on abrogation and the various redemptive-historical functions of the Decalogue are in his early and later statements in the Hebrews commentary. It may be difficult for us to understand them, taking them at face value, but once his careful qualifications are taken into account, along with his clear assertions concerning the perpetuity of the Decalogue under the New Covenant and the grounds for it, his meaning comes clearly into focus. But if we import into Owen our understanding of what certain statements mean or fail to understand his systematic thought, we are apt to misread him and either force on him something he never intended or force him to contradict himself.
· The historical/theological context in which Owen wrote
Primary source documentation has been presented from Calvin, Ursinus, Witsius, Turretin, Protestant Scholastic thought, and Boston. In doing so, the attempt was made to put Owen in historical and theological context. We found that his views on the matters examined were not novel and fit within the theological nomenclature of his contemporaries. Though what he said may be hard to understand and even appear novel to us, it was not so in his day.
[1] Owen, Works, XXII:215.
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
by Richard Barcellos | Dec 22, 2010 | Books, Ecclesiology, Practical Theology
I came across a new phrase this week while reading John Jefferson Davis’ Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence. As you might have guessed from the title of this post it’s “ontic weight.” Here’s what he says:
The personal presence of God in the ecclesia, by virtue of his covenant promises, his Word, sacraments and Spirit, invests the ecclesia with an ontic weight that does not obtain with merely human organizations and assemblies. (63)
When the church gathers itself together intentionally as a church, in the name of the Lord Jesus…, as an assembly of God for the worship of God, then God himself is present, and the church can experience its full theanthropic and ontological weight – the transcendent Christ is then immanently and really present in the midst of the assembly, investing it with his own reality, authority and weightiness. (66)
Davis argues that the gathered church has greater ontological weight than the scattered church. This implies both sacred space and sacred time.
I agree with J. J. Davis!
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
by Richard Barcellos | Dec 20, 2010 | Audio/Video, Current Events
In case anyone was wondering (probably not, though), here is something I have been enjoying for a few weeks. Home for Christmas!
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
