What is Reformed Theology? | ask THEOCAST

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Hi, I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church and host of Theocast. Welcome to Ask Theocast.

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From your point of view, Reformed Theology, there's a lot of different takes on that.

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What is Reformed Theology? I was having a lot of conversations early on in my faith and coming into Reformed Theology.

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A lot of my friends thought I was Catholic. You know, what are all these catechisms and all of that. So if you could kind of help guide us through what

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Reformed Theology is, that would be great. It seems like almost everything gets labeled

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Reformed Theology if it's slightly Calvinistic, right? So if someone believes in the five points of Calvinism, then they get the full label of being

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Reformed. I'm sure you came across this where you would see people who, you know, they promote the five points of Calvinism, therefore they're

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Reformed. And that's an illustration I can give you on that. If someone walked up to me and said, I love golf.

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I play golf all the time. And then I ask them, oh, well, where do you play? Tell me what your favorite course is. And they name the local putt -putt down the road.

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That's not golf, okay? That is not even remotely golf. That is just, you know, the amateur hour of putt -putt.

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Putting is something you do in golf, but it's not golfing. So when someone says they are

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Reformed, and yet the only thing they described being Reformed is the five points of Calvinism, or they might even say the five solas.

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Like, oh yeah, I'm Reformed because I believe in the five solas. Historically, that's not accurate.

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And the reason why it's important to explain these kind of things, Andrew, is that really

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Reformed Theology is an entire way of understanding the Bible.

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So sometimes when people think of Reformed Theology, they immediately think of a doctrine called Soteriology, where that is the understanding of salvation, that God sovereignly saves sinners and elects them.

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But Reformed Theology goes far past that. And I'm going to give you kind of the technical answer to it, but then to try and explain it to you how it changes the way you read the

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Bible from the beginning to the very end. So fundamentally, like from the history, the start of the

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Reformation, those who are really kind of driving what would be known as Reformed Theology, there's three

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Cs. First one, obviously, Calvinism, right? The five points of Calvinism. And every single one of these

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I'm about to describe to you, we have a video for each one. So we'll put them in the description at the end so that you can watch kind of a full explanation.

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So if you don't know what Calvinism is, well, we're going to help you out there. The second one is confessionalism.

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What we're talking about is a Reformed confession that helps structure the way in which we understand the explanation of the

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Bible. A confession is what we literally say we believe. So traditionally, you're talking about the

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Westminster Confession, or as a theocast, we hold to the

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London Baptist Confession. Those are examples that traditionally the Reformed held to the

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Belgium Confession, the Westminster Confession, or the 1699 London Baptist Confession. And then the third

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C is the covenants or covenantalism. Not just like, oh yeah, I believe in the covenants that are in the

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Bible, but we understand the Bible to be structured around really two covenants, or bi -covenantalism.

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So you're thinking of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. So to truly say I'm Reformed, you're saying you understand the

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Christian faith to be Calvinistic, confessional, and covenantal. But there's two more.

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I mean, it's not just Cs. There's really two more structures that I would say drive our understanding of the

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Bible and how we understand the Christian life. That would be a law gospel distinction, making sure that we understand what is the law, what is the gospel.

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Again, this video is not to explain what that is. In the descriptions below, we will have an entire episode that helps explain, several episodes actually, that explain the law and the gospel.

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And then the last, I would say, very defining moment of Reformed theology is what we say the ordinary means.

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This is our understanding of sanctification. This is our understanding of God's interaction with his church.

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Ordinary means what that traditionally means within the Reformed faith is the public preaching and teaching of his word, the sacraments, so the

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Lord's table and baptism, and then prayer. What we mean by this traditionally is that these are the means that God gives his church to give them grace, to strengthen their faith, and to grow and protect them.

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So we think that when we say ordinary, or we would even say primary means, it's not the only way that God communicates or the only way that he administrates grace to his church, but it's the ordinary, the primary way in which he does it.

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So those five points, you could even say the five points of Reformed theology are Calvinism, confessional, covenantal, law gospel, and the ordinary means of grace.

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So I know that's a lot of information, and I would say most people who understand the history of the

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Reformation and claim to be Reformed are going to understand and embrace that.

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So when someone says they're Calvinistic, but they're dispensational, they're not Reformed, they're

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Calvinistic. They kind of have the one part of it. And I'm not trying to be demeaning, but they go to the putt -putt course.

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Another way of saying this is that if someone says, I bought a brand new Mustang, and you walk out and you see four sets of Mustang tires, but no car, that's like being a

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Calvinist. It's a good part of being Reformed, but there's much more to the whole engine of being, or the whole car of being

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Reformed. And this is why, to kind of narrow this all down, this is why this is so important.

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The rest that Theocast talks about, this joy of trusting in Christ, finding that we have all of our joy and our rest and satisfaction in Christ is driven by this theological framework.

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You know, God sovereignly saves us. We don't fall into theological heresy because the confessions are these doctrines that have been handed down to us from the church, tried and true by the church, and often come out of heresy.

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The covenant theology helps us not moralize the Old Testament and give us the full structure of God's word.

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So from beginning, from Genesis to Revelation, we understand that God's full plan of redemption is outflowing from these two covenants, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

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And the whole Bible is about the story of God's redemption. To help us make sure that we're not being moralists with the

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Bible, these two covenants also give us what we say a law gospel understanding of the

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Bible. So you don't, often you can say, you can hear Jesus say, unless you, and he gives you these impossible demands, you cannot enter the kingdom.

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That's law. So we have these law gospel distinctions to keep us from moralizing the text.

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And then, lastly, the ordinary means. We trust in God's means to grow us and to strengthen us, not our own spiritual disciplines, not our

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Bible reading plans, not anything that we do that can manipulate God.

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We look to him and his means. So the entire Reformed faith governs not only your theology, but it governs the way in which you understand and relate to God.

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I would encourage you, if you don't really understand how all of this is a beautiful picture and all fits together, then start this journey with us in Theocast, and we're going to start walking you through what does it mean to be

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Reformed? It's much more than the five solas, and it's much more than the five points of Calvinism.

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The covenant theology, confessionalism, law gospel, ordinary means will really give you a full structure of how to rest in Christ and understand how you fit in God's redemptive plan.

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Hopefully you found this video helpful. If you did, give us a like and subscribe. Hit that notification bell.

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That'll let you know when we have another video that comes out. We have a free book down below. It's called Faith versus Faithfulness.

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It will explain why the Reformed faith loves the confessions and finds those so important.

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That's a free book for you down below. And if you have a question for us or for this video, leave it in the comments down below, and maybe we'll feature it in our next video.