A bit of Barth

Dogmatics in Outline

Karl Barth

Chapter 20: The Coming of Jesus Christ the Judge

-          Barth spends a lot of time talking about his concept of time

-          NT talk about the coming of the Son of man, ie. coming on the clouds of heaven, lightning – “metaphors of ultimate realities” (133)

-          Good quotes:

o   "The miracle for both the Church and the world is that “this goal of hope does not stand somewhere and we must laboriously build the road to it . . . Not that we must come; it is He who comes” (133).

§  We cannot create the circumstances which will lead to Christ’s coming. It is all His doing, His coming.

o   "Jesus Christ’s return to judge the quick and the dead is tidings of joy. ‘With head erect,’ the Christian, the Church may and ought to confront this future. For He that comes is the same who previously offered Himself to the judgment of God” (134).

§  To ponder: Knowing that Christ has already taken on the judgment of God in His first coming, what will the nature of His judgment be at His second?

§  It is the same God – this should give us confidence and comfort.

~lg

"Why Every Calvinist Should be a Premillennialist"

Article: "Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist"
John MacArthur

(from a talk given in March 2007)

John MacArthur

-          A Baptist and a 5-point Calvinist

-          Fundamentalist, inerrancy of Scripture

-          In dispensationalist camp, although with some differing views

-          Against Roman Catholics, against ecumenism

-          Cessationist

Thoughts:

·         An accurate understanding of the future of Israel is “the cornerstone of biblical eschatology”

o   “The key to eschatology is Judeo-centrism which alone provides the cohesive base for the integration of the various features of biblical prophecy.”

·         Abrahamic and Davidic covenants are yet unfulfilled for Israel

·         God’s promises to Israel are “unilateral unconditional sovereign gracious promises to Israel.” “[T]hey will be fulfilled by an elect people in the future whom God will enable to repent and believe.”

·         The issue is the theology of sovereign election

·         Good points here:

o   “To believe that the church somehow has earned the promises given to Israel because we pulled it off on our own and Israel did not, that kind of thinking is foreign to our understanding of sovereign grace. Do we fail to grasp that we as a church exist only by divine sovereign grace and that we are no more able to believe than the Jews were able on their own to believe?”

o   “The New Covenant is not a reward for their faithfulness, it is given in spite of their unfaithfulness.” 

~lg