LITMIR.BIZ

The contemporary church exhibits an elasticity and diversity of doctrine that at times sits oddly with biblical foundations. The presuppositions that God is and that God has spoken too often give place to the assumed priority of the explanatory competence of human reason.
In that, the theology of the church is captive to the thought forms of an Enlightenment rationalism on one hand, or the looseness of postmodernist assumptions of individual autonomy on the other. In those respects, theological argument proceeds from man to God, and not–as in its biblically revealed contours–from God to man.
The Divine Purchase calls the church back to a clear commitment to the gospel of redemption. The kernel of the gospel resides in the apostolic statement that Christ «purchased the church with his own blood.» That divinely ordained accomplishment projects the only remedy for the human condition in the present decaying culture and its intellectual uncertainty and confusion.

Подробнее

The confession the church makes to the world sits oddly in the contemporary cultural complex. Intellectual fashions in the marketplace of ideas have moved beyond an accommodation of biblical-theological categories. Philosophy is unsure of its status in an amorphous postmodernism, and theology threatens to degenerate into intellectual experimentation. They have become mutually suspicious and hesitant of conversation. But a heavy fault lies with the church's own confessional status. For what is it the church has to say to the world? Has it preserved confessional continuity with the Reformation theology that rediscovered its biblical foundations and liberated it from intellectual and confessional shackles? Has the church surrendered the possibility of relevance by having lost its own historic identity? And is it necessary to conclude, as a result, that contemporary culture is no longer penetrable by any word from the old wells of divine disclosure?
In this brief but challenging book, Douglas Vickers brings the Christian confession to the forefront of consideration and reestablishes a theology grounded in historic verities sustained by the scriptural declarations. In straightforward and accessible terms, Being and Belief addresses the meaning of biblical truth for Christian understanding and Christian life.

Подробнее

The church's witness to the world falters in an age of doctrinal uncertainty, emerging experiments of life forms and behavior norms, and consequent cultural pressures. Against the disturbing influences that result, two questions demand response as the church's relation to conflicting intellectual fashions is brought under scrutiny. First, on the level of belief foundations, what is to be understood as the deposit of truth that has been entrusted to the church in the gospel it has historically been set to declare? Second, on the level of actual testimony and procedure, to what extent is the doctrinal foundations it professes reflected in the statements the church inserts into the competing complex of explanatory systems. What, it is to be asked, is the place, office, function, and authority of the church in the cultural nexus into which the divine mandate that defines the church has placed it?
In Belief and Evangelism Douglas Vickers addresses insightfully many of the relationships that result from the bearing of those questions on the integrity of the church in its professed belief and evangelism. Numerous questions that arise from those relationships demand expanded consideration in a full-orbed statement of the gospel.

Подробнее

The confessing church in our time treats lightly the doctrinal deposit of its theological inheritance. The clamor of competition for the reconstruction of belief-systems has too often neglected older and more secure moorings. In a postmodern age that countenances individual belief-idiosyncrasies and accords them sanctity, the answer to the ordinary man's question, «What is the gospel?» is often clouded and confused. Against doctrinal uncertainties and insecurities, The Immediacy of God brings back into prominence a number of foundational issues related to the doctrines of God and salvation, of theology and soteriology. In doing so, it anchors its thought-structure in the basic apologetic presupposition that God is, and in the fundamental hermeneutical principle of divine covenantal purpose.
The originality of Vickers' argument lies in its proposal of new perspectives on its chosen subject-range and, as it becomes necessary for the elucidation of biblical belief, its critical response to proposals for new theological paradigms. The organizing core of the book's argument is its proposition regarding the immediacy of God in his being, his knowledge, his will, and his actions. That core proposition spills its influence to aspects of human salvation. On such levels, questions are raised that strike to the heart of the meaning of the divinely instituted redemptive process. Divine actions within that process are understood to be «immediate,» rather than «mediate.» Redemptive actions of God are «immediate» in the sense that no mediating causes exist between those actions and their effects and outcomes in the human condition.

Подробнее

In an age of theological innovation and doctrinal discount, the heritage of evangelical Reformed theology is in increasing danger of betrayal. Old established understandings of «the faith once delivered to the saints» are under attack, disturbing the peace of the church, tarnishing its witness, and challenging its purity. Against the pressures of newer fashions in thought, Douglas Vickers here returns to the seventeenth-century confessions of faith and illustrates from successive chapters common to three of those confessions the ways in which, and the reasons why, traditional beliefs and doctrinal constructions are to be preserved.
Among questions examined with biblically informed insight are the relation between eternity and time and its significance for the gospel of redemption, the meaning and function of saving faith, the accomplishment of redemption by the incarnate Christ, the significance of his heavenly high priestly office, the high doctrine of the Christian believer's union with Christ, and the implications these doctrinal realities hold for the Christian life.
In a discussion of contemporary theologies, When God Converts a Sinner examines such innovations as the New Perspective on Paul, Federal Vision theology, Shepherdism, and other attempts to effect a paradigm shift in historically received theology.

Подробнее

A question has challenged the human conscience for two thousand years: «How are we to explain the presence of Jesus Christ in this world?» Or who, indeed, was Jesus Christ? A man like the rest of men? Or was he a divine Person? Why was it that well-practiced soldiers who failed to fulfill their commission to arrest him said: «Never man spoke like this man?» The early church confirmed the apostles' declaration that Jesus Christ was the eternal Son of God and that he came into the world to fulfill a messianic-redemptive assignment. «Christ Jesus,» the apostle to the Gentiles explained, «came into the world to save sinners.» In The Cross: Its Meaning and Message in a Postmodern World, Douglas Vickers sees the cross as the watershed of history. The divine objectives that the cross addressed bear vitally on the human condition, vitiated as that is by the entailment of sin. In an age in which postmodernist claims have rejected absolute criteria of truth and validity, the Christ of the cross provides the only refuge for those burdened by the search for meaning. The Cross explores the way of reconciliation between God and man. It affirms the apostolic claim that «In [Christ] are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.»

Подробнее

The relation between Christianity and the claims of reason has been at times sharp and conflicting and at times symbiotic. Noted scholars in the church and in the secular academy have asked what Christianity has to do with culture and what the Christian mind has to say, or should be saying, by way of critique in the marketplace of ideas. In Discovering the Christian Mind, Douglas Vickers argues insightfully that prior to the question of what the Christian mind should be doing or saying is that of what the Christian mind is. Vickers shows that the true identity of the Christian mind derives from the Holy Spirit's conveyance to the soul of the grace of regeneration. The conclusion that regeneration is prior to knowing, and that those know truly who know God truly, challenges thought and opinion.

Подробнее

Competing worldviews cast their impact on the church and the Christian confession. What does it mean to be a Christian in an age that threatens cultural dissolution? Related questions press on a calm consideration of the meaning of the Christian life. Who is Jesus Christ of whose salvific work the Christian confession depends? Why did Jesus Christ come into the world? What is to be said of the human condition following the Adamic fall, which, as John Milton says, «brought death into the world and all our woe»? What is the Christian's highest good, the grounds on which it has life-determining relevance, and what are its existential implications? In this closely reasoned and biblically informed examination of those questions, Douglas Vickers concludes that the Christian's highest good exists in «fellowship with the Father.» The practical and everyday significance of that fellowship is addressed at length, and the meaning and prospect of each Christian's eternal life is shown to be grounded in a vital and indissoluble union with Christ.

Подробнее