I believe in the Communion of Saints by A.W. Tozer

"I believe in the communion of saints."-Apostles' Creed
THESE WORDS WERE WRITTEN into the creed about the middle of the fifth century.
It would be difficult if not altogether impossible for us at this late date to know exactly what was in the minds of the Church Fathers who introduced the words into the creed, but in the Book of Acts we have a description of the first Christian communion: "Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers."
Here is the original apostolic fellowship, the pattern after which every true Christian communion must be modelled.
The word "fellowship," in spite of its abuses, is still a beautiful and meaningful word. When rightly understood it means the same as the word "communion," that is, the act and condition of sharing together in some common blessing by numbers of persons. The communion of saints, then, means an intimate and loving sharing together of certain spiritual blessings by persons who are on an equal footing before the blessing in which they share. This fellowship must include every member of the Church of God from Pentecost to this present moment and on to the end of the age.
Now, before there can be communion there must be union. The sharers are one in a sense altogether above organization, nationality, race or denomination. That oneness is a divine thing, achieved by the Holy Spirit in the act of regeneration. Whoever is born of God is one with everyone else who is born of God. Just as gold is always gold, wherever and in whatever shape it is found, and every detached scrap of gold belongs to the true family and is composed of the same element, so every regenerate soul belongs to the universal Christian community and to the fellowship of the saints.
Every redeemed soul is born out of the same spiritual life as every other redeemed soul and partakes of the divine nature in exactly the same manner. Each one is thus made a member of the Christian community and a sharer in everything which that community enjoys. This is the true communion of saints. But to know this is not enough. If we would enter into the power of it we must exercise ourselves in this truth; we must practice thinking and praying with the thought that we are members of the Body of Christ and brothers to all the ransomed saints living and dead who have believed on Christ and acknowledged Him as Lord.

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Can hope be wrong? On the new universalism

I made myself read Rob Bell's book called Love Wins last week and it wasn't a good experience for me and all I could was to think of the Westminster Confession!! I don't think Rob Bell is a true Universalist, but I agree that he's a New Universalist. Bell has pointed questions that can lead the unlearned down that path of his New Universalism.


Here is a good article by James K. A. Smith.

Ken

Addition: Universalism again, as always(possibility), that's written in favor of Bell's book.

Institutes of the Christian Religion Audio

If your like me and like reading along with audio, than here is a treasure.

Ken

P.S. For any Calvinist, I think the Institutes should be read every year.

Who is this blogger

I'm Ken and from America living in South East Asia. I'm a part-time actor and in film. I have been in a few international commercials and have had a small role in one movie. Things I love, my wife, cooking, hiking, jogging, THEOLOGY, beer, traveling, Calvinism, Pentecostalism, and Michigan.

Rob Bell

I haven't read his book nor I will either, because it doesn't interest me. I do think that many Reformed jump on Bell before even reading his book and turned a mole hill into a mountain. I think there are better targets like Kenneth Copeland who has worse theology than Bell himself.

*Note: I read it, and it was like pulling my beard.

Bell comes clean

Richard Mou(Reformed), here

"I told the USA TODAY reporter that Rob Bell’s newly released Love Wins is a fine book and that I basically agree with his theology. I knew that the book was being widely criticized for having crossed the theological bridge from evangelical orthodoxy into universalism. Not true, I told the reporter. Rob Bell is calling us away from a stingy orthodoxy to a generous orthodoxy.

Let me say it clearly: I am not a universalist. I believe hell as a condition in the afterlife is real, and that it will be occupied. I think Rob believes that too. But he is a creative communicator who likes to prod, and even tease us a bit theologically. Suppose, he likes to say, we go up to someone and tell them that God loves them and sent Jesus to die for their sins. Accept Jesus right now, we say, because if ten minutes from now you die without accepting this offer God will punish you forever in the fires of hell. What kind of God are we presenting to the person? Suppose we told someone that their human father has a wonderful gift for them, offered out of love for them—and then we add that, by the way, if they reject the gift that same father will torment them as long as they live. What would we think of such a father? Good question, I think."

There's more to Calvinism....

If you are a part of the New Calvinism that has sprung up in America or if you have grown up in it you might want to read this, because I'm writing to you also. There is more to Calvinism than the White Horse Inn, debates over Federal Vision, criticizing, John Piper, and Rob Bell and that's just scratching the surface in American Reformed Theology, which historically occupies so little depth and substance.

Ken

Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume

If you have been wanting to read Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics and haven't, well here is a good upcoming abridged version of the dogmatics. It's only 976 pages, much the same size as Louis Berkhof's Systematic I would image, though I'm just comparing page numbers. 


Ken

Karl Barth

One thing when studying Karl Barth that needs to be pointed out is that one doesn't have to become a Barthian to learn from Karl Barth.


Ken

God Lets Loose Karl Bart

"Beware," warns Emerson, "when the great God lets loose a thinker in this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city and no man knows what is safe or where it will end.’’ Nothing less than conflagration appears to have broken out in the religious thought of Europe. Many incendiaries may be pointed to, but there is one whose torch seems to have burned more brightly and to have been applied more effectively than that of any of the others.
Five years ago one began to hear, at the tables of the student clubs and restaurants of Germany, the name of Karl Barth. A young theologian recently called from Switzerland had made an amazingly impressive debut at the University of Göttingen. His chair-- that of Reformed or Calvinistic theology-- was subsidized in part by American Presbyterians, and was not in itself sufficiently exalted to catch the eye of Lutheran Germany. This circumstance made only the more significant the number of students who soon crowded his lecture hall, and the number of students, professors and townspeople who filled and overflowed any church where he had been advertised to preach.


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