Michał Sylwestrowicz ☧🕊❤️‍🔥

„The glory of God is a human being fully alive, and the life of a human being consists in beholding God.” — St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses (4.20.7)

[Michał Sylwestrowicz ☧🕊❤️‍🔥 @firstthesisstan]

This is what the Christian life is most basically:

'When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent,' he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.' ~ Luther

'This life was given to you for repentance, do not waste it in vain pursuits.' ~ Isaac the Syrian

[Michał Sylwestrowicz ☧🕊❤️‍🔥 @firstthesisstan]

@GermanCarranza3 There is a difference between redemption accomplished and redemption applied.

[Michał Sylwestrowicz ☧🕊❤️‍🔥 @firstthesisstan]

@GermanCarranza3 @mugjudge Those are the exact same two main ends of receiving the Eucharist in reformed theology. It is the application of the fruits of the sacrifice of the cross, for the remission of sins and communion with God.

[Stéphane Simonnin @ssimonnin]

John Flavel paraphrasing the Lord Jesus' prayer to his Father in Jn 17.23:

"Thou and I are one essentially, they and I are one mystically: and thou and I are one by communication of the Godhead, and singular fulness of the Spirit to me as mediator: and they and I are one...

[Inquisitor @WesternCatholik]

@Calvinreformed Owen and John Brown of Haddington consider Le Blanc to have been one of the best authors on the controversy of justification. He isn’t drifting towards Rome only clarifying the true state of controversy

[Samuel 🕊️ @logos_asarkos]

“[I]t must be understood there that only he truly believes who carries out in deed what he believes. And because faith and charity cannot be separated from one another—as Paul bears witness by saying, ‘and faith which works through love’” — St. Bede the Venerable, Commentary on James 2:15-17

[Stephen Wolfe @PerfInjust]

"Christ will indeed be mild and gentle towards the weak, but that he will have no softness or effeminacy...Many persons wish to profit by the name of gentleness, so as to gain the applause and esteem of the world, but at the same time betray truth in a base and shameful manner." Calvin

[The Presbytery Inn @PresbyInn]

Atonement has its climax on the cross. However, the entirety of Christ's life from birth to ascension - as well as his continual priestly intercession - is the work of atonement: his humiliation and exaltation (WLC 46-56). He is substitute & federal representative.

[Tyler C @tyler_austin55]

Michael is smart. You pay small fee, you get access to Michael brain. Good deal.

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

Last night, I got the news that my former roommate and friend, Mark McClure, passed away over the weekend.

I met Mark just as I was graduating high school. He had found a Bible while in prison, converted to Christianity, and connected with my friend Kurt through skateboarding. Mark was a gifted skateboarder, and eventually he joined a skateboard ministry that Kurt started and my friend Carl later led. Before long, Carl, Mark, Elliott Liske, and I were leading it together. Those were some of the most exciting years of my life.

We would load up a 24-foot Ryder truck with ramps, rails, and whatever else we could cram into it and travel all over America. We held huge skate outreaches where hundreds of kids would come to skate and hear the gospel. We spent countless hours on the road together. Looking back now, it feels like a lifetime ago. We were young men convinced that the gospel could change the world, and in many ways it was changing ours.

Mark and I eventually became roommates. He was a reader, much like I was. We had a television in our condo, but we rarely used it. We spent our evenings reading books, talking theology, and looking for opportunities to share the gospel.

One of my favorite memories of Mark was after we rented and watched The Matrix. We got so fired up that we decided we were going to go out and tell people that the gospel was the truth that could wake them up from the lies of the world. So we jumped in my car and headed out with no real plan other than to find someone to talk to about Jesus.

Somewhere along the highway we picked up a hitchhiker. He was drunk and told us he had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend at a bar on the west side of town and had been walking for miles. We asked where he lived and discovered he was only a couple of miles from our condo, so we drove him home.

The next thing I knew, Mark and I were sitting in the living room of a complete stranger, explaining the gospel and calling him to repent and believe in Christ. Then, all of a sudden, the front door flew open. His girlfriend stormed in, cussing and demanding to know where he had been. She stopped, looked at us sitting there, completely confused, and said, “Who the hell are you guys?”

The man answered, “These are the guys here to tell us about Jesus.”

It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.
Looking back, I had dozens of experiences like that with Mark. We were always inviting people over to our condo, stopping to talk to strangers, opening our lives to people who were struggling, and looking for opportunities to tell them about Christ. It was a wild time.

Over time, I discovered that Mark had a serious problem with alcohol. Our friend group confronted him about it, and to his credit, he repented. But it would be a struggle that he’d often fall into. It would disappear for a season and then return.

I was privileged to officiate Mark’s wedding to Nicole. It was only the second wedding I had ever performed. We held it at Woodland Mound Park on the east side of Cincinnati. At the reception, they danced to “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses.

I mean this with affection and sincerity, despite how it may sound: it was a white-trash wedding, and I could relate to it completely. These were my people.

Mark and I both came from broken families. His was probably more broken than mine. We were both trying to outrun something. We both knew there were patterns behind us that had swallowed up people we loved: addiction, divorce, laziness, despair. We could see the wreckage scattered behind previous generations, and neither of us wanted that future.

The best way I know to describe it is that some families seem to have a gravitational pull toward self-destruction. It is like a dark portal that keeps trying to drag generation after generation back into itself. You can feel it pulling at you. You can spend years trying to put distance between yourself and it, only to discover that it never entirely stops calling your name.

Some people escape it. Some don’t.

By my late twenties, Mark and I had largely gone different directions. He attended my first church plant for a while, but eventually life carried us down separate paths.

Then last year Nicole died in a tragic accident. Mark woke up to discover that she had bled to death in their home while he slept deeply after drinking heavily the night before. It was a horrific thing to endure, and naturally he was consumed with guilt.

During the last several months, we talked more than we had in years. Having walked through my own share of death, I had some idea of the road ahead of him. We prayed together. We talked often. We discussed grief, regret, guilt, and hope. I was thankful that there were people around him who loved him and were trying to help him find solid ground again.

In particular, my friend Elliott Liske poured himself out for Mark. Elliott loved him faithfully during one of the darkest periods of his life. He listened. He encouraged. He showed up. He prayed. He did the kind of quiet work that rarely gets noticed but often means everything to a hurting man.

But in the end, Mark was unable to escape that dark pull. That portal finally caught him.

Where was Mark with the Lord? Only God knows with certainty. I know that he professed faith in Christ. I know that he never denied Christ with his lips and loved church. Beyond that, I leave him in the hands of a merciful and righteous Judge.

What I do know is that our old friend group has suffered more tragedy than seems possible. Carl died in a house fire alongside some of his children. Nicole died in her accident. Another friend, Stella, had an accidental overdose that didn’t seem like an accident to most of us. And now Mark.

I am not against people caring about national issues. There's just a lot of battles happening in the world right in front of you.

There are neighborhoods, towns, and entire pockets of America where despair hangs over people like a thick fog. Addiction has hollowed out families. Loneliness has become normal. Men and women are haunted by their childhood into their adulthood. Some have simply stopped believing that a different future is possible.

These battles rarely make the news, but they are everywhere. They have names and faces. They are happening to people we grew up with, people we worshiped beside, people we shared meals with, people we loved.

If you are in that darkness right now, if despair feels like it is closing in around you, if addiction has convinced you that escape is impossible, please reach out to someone. Call a friend. Call your pastor. Walk into a church. Ask for help. Do not suffer alone.

The lie despair tells is that nobody cares and that nothing will ever change. Neither is true. There is hope in Christ.

And as I think about Mark, I find myself especially thankful for men like Elliott Liske. Men who answer the phone. Men who show up when everyone else disappears. Men who sit with the grieving. Men who refuse to abandon their friends in the darkness.

We need more men like that. And we need to be more like that ourselves. Give yourself to your people and places. Love your neighbor

[Jonathan Ramont @jonathanramont]

Took me a year, but I finally finished my revisions and modernization of Polanus' Substance. Hopefully some announcement will be made soon about it.

[Michael J. Lynch @reformedtexan]

Okay folks. I need to feed my kids. To that end, I am going to start putting my translations behind a paywall. I will continue doing the four for free--Burgersdijk, Baron, et al.--but I am going to start doing two others. (1/-)

[Edwin D. Nuñez @EdwinNunez1646]

“The term ‘irresistible grace’ is not really of Reformed origin but was used by Jesuits and Remonstrants to characterize the doctrine of the efficacy of grace as it was advocated by Augustine and those who believed as he did. The Reformed in fact had some objections to the term because it was absolutely not their intent to deny that grace is often and indeed always resisted by the unregenerate person and therefore could be resisted.”

— Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, V. 4, 82-83

[Canon & Creed @Canonandcreed]

Chrysostom on Galatians 3:13 and Christ satisfying the demands of the law:

“For the people were liable to punishment since they had not fulfilled the whole law. Christ satisfied a different curse: the one that says "Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree" Both the one who is hanged and the one who transgresses the law are accursed. Christ, who was going to lift that curse, could not properly be made liable to it yet had to receive a curse. He received the curse instead of being liable to it and through this lifted the curse. Just as, when someone is condemned to death, another innocent person who chooses to die for him releases him from that punishment, so Christ also did.... Just as by dying he snatched from death those who were going to die, so also when he suffered the curse he released them from the curse.”—John Chrysostom; Ancient Christian Commentary NT VIII (IVP Academic; 2005), pg. 40

[ZZZZZZIFFSTER @IFFFMEISTER]

@FlyingKulau The apostles literally said baptism is done *unto/into* the forgiveness of sins (gk Acts 2:38), that it saves (1 Peter 3:21) and that it unites us to Christ (Romans 6:3-5). If they *didnt* want us to believe this and had a different view, why didnt they articulate it?

[ZZZZZZIFFSTER @IFFFMEISTER]

one of the best biblical arguments for the sacramental view of baptism is that the apostles weren't stupid. If they wanted to communicate that baptism was a personal profession of faith that in NO WAY is salvific and is only symbolic, they wouldn't have said what they did!

[Jonathan J. McKenzie @JonMcK1647]

I don’t have time for a full review. But I think it is one thing to justify necessary things like just-in-case prepared meals being available for purchase for travelers and another thing to keep a fully staffed restaurant with full bar service open on the Sabbath.

Also, let’s be honest, most humans can live just fine off of one meal or go a day without a meal and our modern aversion to that is because we are gluttons. Eating three meals a day is not a necessity.

[Code name E9 @CodeNameE9]

"Bucer uses Justification ambiguously. It means for him both to impute righteousness and to impart it. The two are distinguishable, and Bucer does distinguish them (at some points more clearly than at others); but he never separates them. It is not a question of one following chronologically upon the other, though this does happen, rather is the second necessarily involved in the first. God never imputes righteousness without also imparting it. He does not simply transform a man’s standing in his sight; he transforms a man’s life in his sight and in the sight of men

[...]
It is precisely his concern to hold these two ideas together that seems to lead Bucer to use them almost indiscriminately. One moment justification can mean to impute righteousness or to forgive, another moment it can mean to impart righteousness or to renew."

~ W. P. Stephens, The holy spirit in the theology of Martin Bucer, pt. 1. ch. 3

[Samuel 🕊️ @logos_asarkos]

“[The Son of God] regenerates generated man, and heals vitiated man, from guilt at once, and from weakness little by little.” - St. Augustine, Against Julian (2.4.8)

[Gallant 🍇 @bongybingy89601]

"The consecration moreover is a wholly necessary preparatory part; by which namely Bread and Wine are truly morally or sacramentally transferred into the body and blood; (just as silver is transferred by coining into coin.)" — Richard Baxter

[Dogma 🦢 @Dogmaticist]

Medieval Augustinian theologian on double justice:

"After the Apostle in the foregoing passages weakened the Law and its righteousness, showing it to be powerless and ineffective unto salvation, he advanced the righteousness of faith, which is twofold:

The first is indeed the satisfactory righteousness which Christ fulfilled through His death, and this is applied to us through faith by which we believe in Him; and through such application there comes about the remission of preceding sins, and in this remission consists a certain righteousness of ours — and it is called the righteousness of faith and the righteousness through the faith of Jesus Christ. Through this righteousness also, infants when they are baptized are justified and are said to have been justified and reconciled to God, because they have been absolved from the guilt of sin.

There is, moreover, another righteousness of faith, which is the outpouring of charity in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who is likewise infused into us so that we may love God and our neighbour with a pure heart and with holy affections — the kind of righteousness which Adam had received and afterward lost through sin."
- Augustino Favaroni of Rome, Commentary on Galatians.