Archive – 2011

In Jeremiah 31, when God promised to bring a “new covenant” that will be better than the “old covenant,” that old covenant was God’s compact with Israel forged at Mount Sinai, delivered through Moses, Sinai is not the first time that “covenant” appears in the Bible. In Genesis 12 God…
CONTINUE

The Components of Biblical Covenants “Covenant” is the biblical way to say “relationship.” But “covenant” refers to a particular kind of interpersonal relationship. There are all sorts of interpersonal relationships in society: superficial acquaintance, business contracts, employment agreements, international treaties, friendship, casual dating, marriage, and more. Biblical covenants between the…
CONTINUE

The Old-Fashioned Way WSC is old-fashioned in other ways as well. Unlike many seminaries, we still require students to learn to read God's Word in the original languages. This was the vision of our founder, J. Gresham Machen, that Westminster would produce men who are experts in the Bible. For…
CONTINUE

3. Getting the Lay of the Land: The “Covenant Terrain” of the Scriptures Picture yourself lost in a forest on a cloudy night—no road signs or trail markers, no landmarks to be seen. What seemed, when you set out on it, to be a well-worn path disappeared into a thicket,…
CONTINUE

Follow the Money In the discussion over the question, "Why seminary?" a frequent objection is that seminary is too expensive. The assumption here seems to be that professional training for our ministers could be done less expensively by frugal pastors who know what they are doing. Well, the administrative overhead…
CONTINUE

Christ, the Final Prophet The focus of the prophet’s mission was revelation, delivering the Word of God. As the Shorter Catechism says, “Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by his word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation” (WSC 24). Israel’s prophets were…
CONTINUE

Seminary and the Church There is a movement afoot to change the way seminary students are educated. Dissatisfied with the results produced by some schools, some congregations have begun their own in-house seminaries on the ground that sending students away to seminary take them out of the local church. Yes,…
CONTINUE

2. Landmarks: Biblical elements and motifs that are built into the offices of covenantal mediation that God gave Israel, offices that now converge in Christ, who is, in the end, “only mediator between God and man” (1 Tim. 2:5). Landmarks are not as specific as street signs. But looming landmarks…
CONTINUE

The Scholar-Pastor At WSC we are still old-fashioned enough to believe that a seminary education comes only one way: through hard work. Therefore, while many seminaries are now advertising (quite seductively it seems!) that one can earn a seminary degree without ever leaving home, at WSC we believe that self-sacrifice…
CONTINUE

We have talked about the “why” of following the apostles’ lead in preaching Christ from all the Scriptures: His divine-human Person and saving mission are the unifying theme of Israel’s ancient Scriptures, He is the focus of the apostles’ preaching as new covenant ministers, Fixing our hearers’ spiritual gaze on…
CONTINUE