Christ the Center

In this episode, we welcome Cornelis Venema to discuss Roots Renewed: Perspectives on the United Reformed Churches in North America (After Thirty Years), a collection he edited on the history and identity of the United Reformed Churches in North America. We trace the Dutch and Christian Reformed histories that shaped the URCNA, consider its relationship with the Canadian Reformed Churches, and discuss Scripture, the confessions, and church order in Reformed ecclesial identity.We also reflect on the reform efforts preceding the URCNA’s formation, the relationship between Mid-America Reformed Seminary and the federation, and the book’s treatment of missions, evangelism, and church planting.Reformed Fellowship is offering Reformed Forum listeners 30 percent off. Use the code ROOTS30 at checkout. The discount applies to single copies, which are $35, and to cases of sixteen, which are already reduced to $400 and ship free. A case puts the book in the hands of a consistory, session, or study group.Chapters00:00 Opening and welcome03:22 How the book took shape08:03 Dutch roots and CRC history20:03 The URCNA and the Canadian Reformed Churches35:10 Scripture, confessions, and Reformed identity46:18 Reasons for forming the URCNA51:17 Church history and catholicity across generations56:04 A practical proposal for church unity57:41 Reform efforts before federation1:03:13 Mid-America Reformed Seminary and the URCNA1:12:08 What the book hopes to preserve1:15:00 Missions, evangelism, and church planting1:17:38 Growth and decline in the URC and CRC1:21:48 The book in wider Reformed conversations1:23:01 Reformed Fellowship’s history1:25:54 Closing thoughts and book information

Jim Cassidy joins Camden Bucey to discuss the Gospel of Mark and a newly recorded Reformed Academy course, The Gospel of Mark: A Study in the Kingdom. They consider how Mark identifies Jesus as the divine King and teaches the nature of his kingdom through a fast-moving account of Christ’s ministry.The conversation explores faith and union with Christ, Mark’s high Christology, exorcisms as signs of Christ’s conquest over Satan, Jesus’s cleansing of the unclean, the covenantal transition signaled in Mark 7, and the two-stage healing of the blind man as a mirror of the disciples’ partial understanding. They also discuss why the kingdom advances through the cross and resurrection rather than worldly power—and how that hope steadies an anxious church.ResourcesReformed AcademyChrist the Center 1000 SummitReformed Forum newsletterChapters00:00 Introduction01:57 Reformed Academy courses with Jim Cassidy04:03 Christ the Center episode 1000 summit10:00 The Gospel of Mark as a study in the kingdom15:14 Mark’s rapid narrative and distinctive emphasis18:31 Faith, healing, and union with Christ21:13 Mark’s high Christology26:30 Exorcism and the conquest of Satan’s kingdom32:58 Jesus, purity, and the covenantal transition37:40 Scripture and tradition in Mark 742:35 The two-stage healing of the blind man47:45 Victory through the cross and suffering50:52 Rendering to Caesar and to God55:45 Resurrection hope for an anxious church59:57 Peter’s confession and the structure of Mark62:14 Conclusion

Bradley G. Green joins Camden Bucey to discuss What Is Critical Theory?: A Concise Christian Analysis. They trace the Frankfurt School’s Marxist roots and explain why thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse turned from a narrowly economic account of oppression toward culture, institutions, authority, family, and religion.The conversation evaluates critical theory as a counterfeit religious vision with its own accounts of creation, sin, redemption, and eschatology. Drawing on Cornelius Van Til, Green shows how unbelieving thought oscillates between rationalism and irrationalism; drawing on Henry Van Til, he explains why culture is “religion externalized.”ResourcesWhat Is Critical Theory?: A Concise Christian AnalysisBradley G. Green at Southern SeminaryChrist OverallChapters00:00 Introduction04:30 Introducing What Is Critical Theory?08:14 Marxism after the failed German revolution10:43 The major Frankfurt School thinkers12:35 Culture, oppression, and the long march through the institutions15:54 Critical theory as a counterfeit religion19:06 What the critical theorists see—and miss21:56 Creation, givenness, and the autonomous individual24:05 Sin relocated from the heart to the system25:18 Marcuse’s vision of sexual liberation29:42 Utopian hope and Adorno’s “Grand Hotel Abyss”33:11 Walter Benjamin and a “messianic rupture”36:45 Repressive tolerance and the authoritarian personality42:35 Van Til on rationalism and irrationalism46:31 Culture as religion externalized49:22 Pastoral and educational applications53:55 Using the book for personal and group study56:20 Conclusion

Kevin DeYoung joins Camden Bucey to discuss Church History for Everyone, Volume 1: The Story of Christianity from the Fall of Jerusalem to the Dawn of the Reformation. They consider why Christianity is inseparable from history and how the story of the church testifies to Christ’s promise to build and preserve his people by his Word and Spirit.The conversation explores how Christians can remember faithful men and women without lapsing into hagiography—or reducing the past to a catalogue of failures. Camden and Kevin also discuss monasticism, the preservation of learning and liturgy, Protestant retrieval of medieval theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux, and the figures who will appear in the forthcoming second volume.Chapters00:00 Introduction00:50 Christ the Center 1000 summit update12:55 Introducing Church History for Everyone15:51 Conversation with Kevin DeYoung17:30 From Sunday school lectures to a two-volume history20:58 Why Christianity is inseparable from history23:48 Church history as family history26:38 Beyond hagiography and “warts only” history30:57 Choosing characters and telling the church’s story35:30 What Protestants can learn from monasticism39:53 Recovering the medieval church43:59 Previewing volume 246:53 ConclusionResourcesChurch History for Everyone, Volume 1Clearly Reformed

Jared Poulton joins Camden Bucey to discuss Van Til’s Counseling Movement: A Critical Analysis of Jay Adams and Biblical Counseling. They trace how Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetics supplied key theological instincts for Jay Adams and the modern biblical counseling movement, including the God-relatedness of every human problem, dependence upon divine revelation, and confidence in Scripture’s sufficiency for pastoral ministry.The conversation also examines tensions within contemporary biblical counseling. Camden and Jared consider the antithesis, common grace, the relation of the book of nature to the book of Scripture, and the danger of either rejecting all extra-biblical knowledge or baptizing secular methods without sufficient theological scrutiny. Throughout, they argue that faithful counseling should serve the church’s disciple-making mission and bring every claim about human life under the authoritative framework of God’s Word.ResourcesVan Til’s Counseling MovementInstitute for Reformed Biblical CounselingChapters00:00 Introduction03:12 Jared Poulton’s path into biblical counseling09:12 What is biblical counseling?17:44 The sufficiency of Scripture and pastoral counsel23:09 CCEF, David Powlison, and Van Til27:29 A Van Tilian foundation and an identity crisis32:48 Competing trajectories in biblical counseling41:02 Robert K. Rudolph and Jay Adams44:02 Three streams that shaped Adams50:57 God is man’s environment55:58 Presuppositions and borrowed terminology61:37 The antithesis and secular psychology67:06 Scripture’s framework for counseling72:59 Common grace and the two-book approach75:56 Counseling in service of the church’s mission77:42 Conclusion

Hebrews never pits the covenants against one another as law versus gospel; it presents them as grace and grace—the same house, the same people, the same promise. Yet the old was always preparatory: shadow giving way to substance, promise to fulfillment. Marcus A. Mininger traces that organic development and shows why the unity of the one covenant is precisely what makes Hebrews’ warning so urgent. The address closes where the letter does—on persevering within the covenant and resting in the sole sufficiency of Christ.Dr. Marcus A. Mininger is professor of New Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, with research on Paul and the General Epistles—including a forthcoming study of the warning passages in Hebrews.Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.Watch this address: https://youtu.be/DMhQflaD8PMWatch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCAreformedforum.orgMentioned in this episode:Christ the Center 1000Christ the Center 1000

Few passages have unsettled readers like Hebrews’ warning that it is “impossible … to restore again to repentance” those who fall away. Does it teach a sin beyond forgiveness? Marcus A. Mininger clears away the common misreadings and names the real danger the author confronts: the temptation to abandon Christ and re-lay a foundation in the old covenant alone. The warning, rightly heard, is not about a sin too great to forgive but about the impossibility of going back—and it sets up the covenant question taken up in the session that follows.Dr. Marcus A. Mininger is professor of New Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, with research on Paul and the General Epistles—including a forthcoming study of the warning passages in Hebrews.Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.Watch this address: https://youtu.be/9B4fCp9femsWatch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCAreformedforum.orgMentioned in this episode:Christ the Center 1000Christ the Center 1000

A greater Joshua has come. Benjamin L. Gladd takes another look at Jesus’s exorcisms, reading them against the Old Testament backdrop of Israel’s conquest. Where Joshua led a people into an earthly rest by the sword, Christ leads his people into a greater rest by the Spirit and the word, defeating the powers that held them captive. The kingdom does not advance by force but by the triumph of the one Savior who gathers one people to himself, and the exorcisms are a preview of that greater conquest.Dr. Benjamin L. Gladd is executive director of the Carson Center for Theological Renewal and formerly professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson. He edits the Essential Studies in Biblical Theology series and has written widely on the use of the Old Testament in the New, including works co-authored with G. K. Beale.Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.Watch this address: https://youtu.be/UeBRopgfpmIWatch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCAreformedforum.orgMentioned in this episode:Christ the Center 1000Christ the Center 1000

When does the long-promised restoration of Israel take place? G. K. Beale gives particular attention to Acts 1:8 and its use of the Old Testament and argues that the restoration is already under way in the church's Spirit-empowered witness to the nations. God fulfills his covenant promises to Israel in Christ and carries them to the ends of the earth, as the one Savior gathers one people to himself. The answer has direct consequences for how we understand the church, the nations, and the promises of the covenant.Dr. Gregory K. Beale teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary, Dallas. He is a leading New Testament scholar known for his work on biblical theology, the use of the Old Testament in the New, and the temple theme across Scripture.Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, "The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose," at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.Watch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCAhttps://reformedforum.orgMentioned in this episode:Christ the Center 1000Christ the Center 1000

Mark Gilbert joins Camden Bucey to examine what Protestants and Roman Catholics mean when they speak of Christian unity. Drawing on Gilbert’s conversion from Roman Catholicism, they contrast a unity grounded in the Spirit’s work through the Word with Rome’s institutional claim to mediate grace and gather humanity into one visible communion.The conversation turns to Vatican II and Karl Rahner’s doctrine of the “anonymous Christian.” Camden and Mark consider Rahner’s anthropology, his account of God’s self-communication, and the influence of this framework on Roman Catholic inclusivism. They conclude with a pastoral call to speak with clarity and charity and to offer the assurance found only in the finished work of Christ.ResourcesTalking with Catholics About JesusThe Nicene CreedThe Nicene Creed and the Nature of Christian UnityChapters00:00 Introduction03:48 Mark Gilbert’s journey from Roman Catholicism10:50 The Rome Scholars and Leaders Network15:04 Catholic inclusivity after Vatican II20:36 Institutional and spiritual views of unity26:43 The church as a continuing incarnation28:58 Vatican II and Karl Rahner35:36 Van Til, Rahner, and the image of God45:18 The “anonymous Christian”47:30 Roman Catholicism in a pluralistic world52:06 Inclusivity, gender, and doctrinal development58:19 Rahner, Ratzinger, and competing Catholic trajectories61:28 The Roman Catholic Church as a “sacrament of unity”65:33 Unity in truth and evangelizing Roman Catholics70:14 Resources for churches and small groups72:59 Conclusion