Lo Que Todo Cristiano Debe Saber On

The Reformed Theology

For Víctor B. García

 

What means the word It Reforms?

The word reforms can be seen from several perspectives:

• Etymologically he means to return him his form to what it has been deformed.
• Historically it refers to the Protestant reform that began in Switzerland and Germany with Ulrico Zuinglio and Martin Luther and then it spread over the whole Europe and England with Juan Calvino, Juan Knox and the English puritans in the centuries sixteen and seventeen.
• Doctrinalmente has to do with the doctrines and the Biblical beginning restored during the period of the reform.
• Spiritually it is the result of the constant transformation that these doctrines and beginning produce in the Christian and the church when they are implemented in practice.

What is the Reformed Theology?

The Reformed Theology includes all the aspects of the word reforms.

•  First, because he thinks about how to reform — devolverle the original form to the Christianity.

•  Second, because it has a historical connection with the age of the reform and the reformers.

• Third, because it supports the theological beginning recovered during the reform and expressed in the reformed confessions (the Catechism of Heildelberg, the Belgian Confession, Cánones de Dort, the Confession and the Catechisms of Westminster and the Confession of London of 1689) ;.

• Quarter, because his doctrinal beginning produces one continues reform in those who believe it and live through it.

The reformed theology is connected to the history taken root in the Writing and activated by the God's Spirit. It is a historical theology why he recognizes what God has done in not alone past from of the days of the reform but from the apostolic days — and it is sustained of it without being a sterile tradition. It is a systematical theology because he emphasizes a coherent doctrinal system and good defined without being a mental dead letter system. That's why, the real reformed theology is a knowledge and a living experience that transforms the Christians who receive it and the churches that implement it. She puts us under the authority and sufficiency of the Writing, under the centrality of the God's holiness, under Christ's grace and under the power and the communion of the Holy Spirit. The beginning that governs to those who know and live experimentally through the reformed theology “There is Reformed Pero Siempre Reformándo” (or as the reformers were saying, in Latin, (Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda)

The Mottoes of the Reform

The reformers of the century sixteen synthesized the extract of the theology reformed in five mottoes that they were accustomed to expressing in Latin:

1) Only the Writing (Alone Scriptura)

2) Only for the faith (Alone Fide)

3) Only for grace (Alone Gratia)

4) Alone Christ (Solus Cristhus)

5) Only to God Gloria (Soli Deo Glory).

This shows us that the extract of the reformed theology is not another thing than the emphasis on the authority of the Writing, the proclamation of the need for the faith, the exaltation of the doctrines of the grace, the declaration of Christ's sufficiency and the search of the God's glory

Doctrines that Distinguish to the Reformed Theology

The distinctive doctrines of the Reformed Theology are grouped in two systems known as The Doctrines of the Grace and The Theology of the Agreement

1) The Doctrines of the Grace

The doctrines of the grace also are known like Calvinism, a name

inappropriate, first of all because he was not Juan Calvino who conceived them not

it systematized and in second because there are no doctrines conceived by man but revealed by God in the Writing. The clearest and systematical historical exhibition of the doctrines of the grace comes of the days of the Reform and it is in the Cánones of the Synod of Dort, a doctrinal declaration written in the city of Dordrecht, Holland, where in 1618 and 1619 realized a theological convocation to refute the doctrines of the antagonists, a group of Dutch theologians who were opposed to the God's sovereignty and were teaching the sufficiency and centrality of the human faith to be saved, a well-known education also inappropriately how arminianismo. Cánones de Dort affirms that only God saves since neither the works of the man nor his natural faith it is sufficient for the salvation, and that the saving faith is a supernatural faith that God gives to his elected ones when it calls them efficiently by his sovereign grace. Five doctrines of the grace were encapsulated in the acrostic TULIP that in English corresponds to his initials. The T is for Whole Depravation, in Spanish Depravación Total ; the U is for Unconditional Election, in Spanish Elección Incondicional ; the L is for Limited Atonement, in Spanish Expiación Limitada (or Individual) ; the Ist is for Irresistible Grace, in Spanish Gracia Irresistible ; and the P is for Perseverance of the Saints, in Spanish Perseverancia de los Santos.

Entire depravity – every human being has been corrupted by the sin to such an end that can be safe neither for his works nor for his natural faith.

 

Unconditional election – the election and the saving faith there are a God's gift. He chooses unconditionally, from before the foundation of the world, to that they have to be safe.

 

Particular or limited atonement – Christ's death is sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world but his saving efficacy is limited particularly to the elected ones.

 

Irresistible grace – in his sovereign grace God calls and regenerates effectively and irresistibly to his chosen ones for salvation.

 

Perseverance of the Saints – God preserves his chosen ones for salvation and gives them the grace, the power and the provision to persevere up to the end.

What is needed to understand the doctrines of the grace?

Two things are needed to understand the doctrines of the grace: the infinite sovereignty of God and the absolute pecaminosidad of the man. It is impossible to understand these doctrines when merit assumes to him to the effort, to the faith or to the will you humanize. The only way of understanding them is to admit that the salvation belongs to Jehovah (Job. 2.9), that is He who chooses us, not we to Him (Juan 15.16), that He chose us before the foundation of the world (Ef. 1.4), that the salvation does not depend on the one that wants not on the one that runs but of God who has compassion (Rom. 9.1516). These are doctrines completely centred on God and there are the only ones by means of which it is possible to attribute really to God all the power, the wealths, the knowledge, the fortitude, the honor, the glory and the praise (Ap. 5.12 ; 4.11 ; 1 Chronicles 29.11). Whoever understands and recognize the supreme Divine sovereignty and the gravity of the sinful condition of the man comes inevitably to the doctrines of the grace.

2) The Theology of the Agreement

The theology of the agreement is a coherent explanation of the history of the Biblical revelation. Across her we can contemplate the unit of the Writing and of the plan of

redemption. The theology of the agreement is not a simple doctrine but an integral system ; also is a hermeneutic tool, that is to say a tool for the correct one

interpretation of the Bible. The Theology of the Agreement is a harmonization of the Biblical agreements between which the grace agreement is the most prominent.

It was for the agreement of grace that Adam, instead of being annihilated on having broken the agreement of works that God had done with him in the Eden, got the promise of a redeemer and an eternal redemption. The embryo of this agreement of grace is the Genesis promise 3.15 where God announced the arrival of one who would win to the snake and whom it called ‘the seed of the woman.’ This seed of the woman finds his commission in Christ, and his identity was revealed gradually across big successive agreements of the history of the redemption that God did in different epochs and with different men. These agreements done in the ancient testament with Noe, Abraham, Cradle and David, are connected one with other and stem from the grace agreement. The theology of the Bible is structured and harmonized inside the frame of these successive agreements. They culminate and they are completed in the New Agreement done by our Mister Jesus Christ by his death in the cross.

The theology of the agreement explains the progress of the history of the redemption across the different agreements, to we allow to see the unit of the ancient one and the new testament and there avoids the confusion and the inconsistencies in the interpretation of the eschatology (the doctrines on the future and the final times) the soteriología (the doctrines on the salvation) and the ecclesiology (the doctrines on the church). These agreements are connected by the promise mentioned or alluded in every agreement: "I will be your God and you will be my people,” a phrase that appears for the first time in Gene. 17.7 and for last in Apocalypse 21.3, but it is mentioned or is aforesaid repeatedly whenever God establishes, ratifies or renews an agreement. The maximum plenitude of this promise is evident in the person of Christ, the supreme consummating one of the agreement of grace, Emmanuel, God with us.