To someone new to the Reformed faith, I would say that being Reformed is trying to be self-consciously Biblical. It is very simply trying to reform oneself to Christ's service. You don't have to be one thing or the other to be Reformed, just willing to obey the Bible's teachings and commands out of a sense of thankfulness to Christ for salvation. The Sola's and the five heads of doctrine come afterwards, as you learn more. And as you learn to read the Bible within its own context, you end up reading it in terms of what has been called Covenant Theology, because that's how the Bible reads.

To the more mature, being Reformed becomes a little more tricky. It sometimes isn't enough just to say that it consists of following the five sola's or the five heads of doctrine. For such people we also have to stress the limits of doctrine, and the limits of the sola's not to go beyond them.

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JohnV :detective:

John Vandervliet
Ontario, Canada
member of: Canadian Reformed Church
"In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are" C.S Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism