Living in Wonderland or Lost in Wonder, Love and Praise

August 01, 2014

by Scott Oliphint

As we make our monthly way through the Ten Tenets, Tenet 7 is one that can be simply put, but remains complex in its application. Tenet 7 is this:

There is an absolute, covenantal antithesis between Christian theism and any other, opposing, position. Thus, Christianity is true and anything opposing it is false.

This tenet has a host of ideas supporting it, and it may help to clarify the terms used in order to make explicit some of those ideas. When we think of the antithesis as “absolute,” we are pointing to the fact that the ground or foundation of the antithesis is not measured on a relative scale. For example, the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian does not depend on how each one is acting at a particular time. It is not measured by how much “good” a non-Christian accomplishes, or how much sin a Christian commits. The way in which God has chosen to identify mankind, since the fall, is that one is either in Adam or one is in Christ. So, when God looks on the host of people on the earth, he sees those who either abide under wrath, by virtue of being sinful in Adam, or under grace, by virtue of being counted righteous in Christ. There is no third “place” to be. There is no sliding scale with God. No one can be partially in Adam and partially in Christ. One’s foundation before God is defined by one of these two “Adams,” the first or the last (I Cor. 15:45). Because of this, we all operate — we live and move and have our being — in terms of the one to whom we are united.

continue reading on Reformation 21.

Scott Oliphint

Dr. Oliphint (PhD, Westminster) is professor of apologetics and systematic theology at WTS.

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