Preserving Faith: Generational Continuity and Doctrinal Integrity

Well, the first thing that can be said is that you preserve the faith by working at it, by thinking about it, by being self-conscious about it. It doesn't happen automatically. And what I've observed as a church historian is the real danger point usually is not the transition from the first generation to the second generation. [00:01:11]

The difficulty comes with the third and the fourth generation when you move away from a personal knowledge of the founder. And in my experience, I remember as a young man being on a pastor search committee, and we were given advice at the beginning of our work as a pastor search committee. [00:01:58]

Two things flash to my mind and it's the seminaries and the pulpit. And when seminaries go south, they produce men who do not preach the Word of God and who are not theologically, doctrinally sound. And when the seminaries are on a slippery slope, it becomes a factory of supplying men in pulpits that no longer hold to the faith. [00:03:54]

I was thinking of something that Hodge boasted about at Princeton that he had never had an original thought in his entire life, and by that he meant that he was content in emphasizing the fundamentals and basics of the gospel. You know, when I think of R.C., I always think of Luther. [00:05:07]

R.C. was capable of summarizing every philosopher from Plato to Wittgenstein, but when he preached He was back to the basics. He was about justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from the works of the law. I think what I have seen in my lifetime is that Reformed theologians and Reformed preachers have majored on things that are not fundamental to the gospel. [00:05:43]

And, I think, one of the important things that means is that the passing on of the baton, or the ba-ton, as I would say, is not simply a matter of the formal truth of the Scripture, but the atmosphere and tone of the truth as that is presented in the Scripture and modelled to us by those who teach us the Scriptures. [00:07:48]

I think faithfulness is probably one of the least appreciated, but most urgent of characteristics, and I think it's easier to be more attracted by the shiny new thing, the innovation, the short-term win, but that can come with a compromise that can slowly chip away at one's identity, and you don't see it till it's too late, but then you've just drifted off course. [00:11:22]

I found in the church that we tend to go to one extreme or the other. We tend to gravitate towards always contending and knowing that we must contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints, but I find a tendency for all of us, men, women, but particularly men who are training for ministry and in ministry thinking that all they must be doing is contending. [00:14:05]

R.C. was faithful in standing firm on the Bible and the theology of the Bible, and thus he was courageous, thus he was willing to take a bold stand. He was willing not to be liked. He was willing to be hated. He was willing to be relegated by the academy because he didn't believe in the myth of influence, yet he was also faithful in grace and humility and compassion. [00:15:45]

And one of most dangerous prayers we can pray is that God would mature us, that God would humble us, that God would grow us, because that typically means that He will allow suffering to come into our lives. And what we do with that suffering, how we respond to that suffering, not exploiting it but humbling ourselves and enduring it is we fix our eyes on Christ is the only genuine path to true Christian maturity. [00:22:48]

The word "ministry" simply means "service," and it can either mean a role of service, an office of service, but it can mean really any service that is rendered to another. And so, that's very important, because sometimes even the question might be problematic for some Christians when they think, "Well, that just shouldn't be. Women can't be in ministry at all." [00:31:55]

Well, I would say, to start with as you would send her to college, she needs to be in a church that preaches the Word of God where she has an anchor point while she is in school and being bombarded with all of the secular lies, that on a regular basis she is hearing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth coming from that pulpit. [00:41:40]