What Pastor Luke is reading: Richard Muller
Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, to be perfectly specific. Sounds like a mouth full—and it is—but I'm finding that it's really a head full. Muller is P.J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids and is a premier scholar on the theology and theological method of those who came after the Reformers. I would like to share three benefits I'm receiving from his work.
IT'S CHALLENGING
I'm used to reading Puritans like Owen and Charnock, but I'm not as used to the modern scholarly flavor of this kind of historical theology. It has been demanding, and I love that. It's making me think. It's making me reexamine my theological presuppositions. More than anything it's letting me know how very much I have to learn.
IT'S EDIFYING
It is building up my faith. God's truth is exquisitely majestic and the great theological prowess of our spiritual forebears hunted down that glory in God's revelation. Great minds revolved the mighty themes of Scripture and produced pristine theological system. The wonder, the unsearchableness, the riches, the privilege of having the disclosure of the living God in Christ is being driven into my heart anew.
IT'S TRUE
The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is his bride, and he has been faithful to sanctify her over the centuries. We've heard it ad nauseam, "We stand on the shoulders of giants," but it's true. We are not reinventing the wheels of truth and error in the year of our Lord 2018. No, we are building upon the Herculean excavations and Michelangelonian productions of many workmen gone before. We benefit tremendously from the Lord's work through them, his gifts to his church (Eph. 4:11).