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Originally Posted by ManleyBeasley  Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott1 There are a lot of good comments here.
At the root of this, is soteriology. If you believe man is ultimately responsible for his own salvation, you tend to behave one way, in the church and individually.
On the other, if you believe God is ultimately responsible for salvation, you behave another. If you believe that, your life is full of praise and obedience for what you could never have done for yourself.
Reformed Theology sees more that the job of the church is to worship Him and to make His invisible Kingdom visible, not to press people for "decisions" outside of the context of His Church. | I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean we don't exhort people to repent and believe? I certainly don't agree with trying to scam someone into praying a "sinners prayer" but the gospels and book of acts are filled with Christ and the apostles exhorting people to repent and believe the gospel. I may be misreading you. |
Mr Beasly,
That's certainly understandable. It is difficult to follow the back-and-forth on this.
It might be helpful to remember the original thread question is whether the Confessions adequately define an individual's responsibility to preach the Gospel.
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Dr Gonzales
It doesn't appear to me that the WCF, Savoy, or 1689 adequately articulate and underscore the church's and individual Christian's obligation vis-a-vis evangelistic and missionary outreach (i.e., the Great Commission).
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The thread back-and-forth has touched on the differences in the way "Reformed" and "broad evangelical" do missions and evangelism.
I was explaining that what Reformed calls "the doctrines of Grace" (5 points of Calvinism) greatly effect the way we understand salvation. That boils down to a God-centered versus a man-centered view. For example, Reformed would say that regeneration and faith in Christ are 100% gifts of God that must first occur, by God's action before a person can be saved. While that (e.g. the "5 points") are not being directly debated here, they effect the way evangelism and missions are done.
For example, Reformed does not tend to do "crusade ralies" or emphasize "making decisions" for Christ but rather focus on discipleship within the local church as a way of bringing out the Gospel. When missionaries go out, Reformed would tend to send them a church planters under church authority and the gospel would work out through discipleship, that is building a local church.
In addition, all-of-life discipleship (emphasized in Reformed, but not in Broad Evangelicalism) tends to make each individual a "missionary" in their sphere of influence. Not as a "preacher" or what we would understand as a "teacher" (elder) but as an individual's "all of life" discipleship.
The Westminster Confession doctrinally, goes into great detail about the Gospel (i.e. justification by faith alone) but in the context of building the local church rather than a charge to layman to go out, on their own, to evangelize.
There's more than we can cover here in one thread, but due to the understanding of "covenant families" Reformed also emphasizes discipling within the family. That is a whole other aspect, but a very real aspect of evangelism that is emphasized, particulary to heads of families in Reformed Theology. (It's more than a hope, because of special grace and promises we see to the children of Believers).
Many outside of Reformed Theology don't think Reformed does missions or evangelizes much which stems from a misunderstanding of several things, including the doctrines of salvation (soteriology). But, if you look historically, what Calvin did in Switzerland, the founding of this country, evangelism in South Korea, the number of domestic and international missionaries in the PCA per capita- the impression is not only incorrect, but very very incorrect. I don't say this defensively, only with assurance and confidence that the Reformed Confessions integrate evangelism in every aspect of the life of the Church and the Believer (more so, than do "broad evangelicals.")