Currently Watching Stranger Than Fiction By Will Ferrell, Queen Latifah, Peter Grosz, Ricky Adams, Christian Stolte see related

Valentine:
"That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man,
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman."

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (III, i, 104-105)

A dear brother, Clint Humfrey (see COWBOYOLOGY ), recently asked me what, in my opinion, were the “top ten most important things for founding a theological institution for training pastors?” Well, I would say the following are vital—the order is not important:

1) The school must be confessional—the school must have a solid statement of faith that at a minimum affirms inerrancy, a robust Nicene Trinitarianism and Chalcedonian Christology, the solas of the Reformation, justification by faith alone, and the doctrines of grace. All faculty at the school need to yearly pledge their commitment to the statement of faith without any mental reservation.

2) The school must be passionate about missions, local and global.

3) The leadership of the school must be subject to an association of local churches, whose pastors and members are vitally involved in supporting the church in spiritual and material ways. I fully believe that the ownership of such a school is best drawn from a group of churches.

4) The school must be committed to the highest academic standards and provincial/state accreditation needs to be eventually sought.

5) The majority of the teachers should have had some pastoral experience and they must be demonstrably lovers of the church.

6) The leadership of the school needs to be directly appointed by a Board of Directors/Trustees drawn from the churches supporting the school.

7) Along with the academic emphases of the school, there must be a stress on spirituality/spiritual formation/piety.

The school needs, at a minimum, a good solid reference library of 10,000 volumes.

9) Each of the students entering the school must have a recommendation from a local church. In turn, they must be involved, throughout their studies, in practical ministry.

10) Days of prayer need to be instituted and observed by the school.

Currently Listening De-Loused in the Comatorium By The Mars Volta see related

The differentiating quality of faith is that the nature and function of faith is to rest completely upon another. It is this resting, confiding, entrusting quality of faith that makes it appropriate to and indeed exhibitive of the nature of justification.

 

It is consonant:

* with its source as the free grace of God,

* with its nature as a forensic act, and

* with its ground as the righteousness of Christ.

Faith terminates upon Christ and his righteousness and it makes mention of his righteousness and of his only. This is the Savior's specific identity in the matter of justification -- he is the Lord our righteousness. And in resting upon him alone for salvation it is faith that perfectly dovetails justification in him and his righteousness.

 

Other graces or fruits of the Spirit have their own specific functions in the application of redemption, but only faith has as its specific quality the receiving and resting of self-abandonment and totality of self-commitment.

 

This is both the stumbling-block and the irresistible appeal of the gospel. It is the stumbling-block to self-righteousness, and self-righteousness is the arch-demon of antithesis to grace. It is the glory of the gospel for the contrite and brokenhearted -- if we put any other exercise of the human spirit in the place of faith, then we cut the throat of the only confidence a sinner conscious of his lost and helpless condition can entertain. Justification by faith is the jubilee trumpet of the gospel because it proclaims the gospel to the poor and destitute whose only door of hope is to roll themselves in total helplessness upon the grace and power and righteousness of the Redeemer of the lost. In the words of one, "cast out your anchor into the ocean of the Redeemer’s merits."

 

Faith is always joined with repentance, love, and hope. A faith severed from these is not the faith of the contrite and therefore it is not the faith that justifies. But it is faith alone that justifies because its specific quality is to find our all in Christ and his righteousness.