Reformed Theology is More than Just 'The Five Solas'...

The Five Marks of Reformed Theology

So when someone says they are reformed, and yet the only thing they described being reformed is the five points of Calvinism, or they might even say the five solas, like, oh yeah, I'm reformed because I believe in the five solas.

Historically, that's not accurate. Reformed theology is an entire way of understanding the Bible. 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.

But reformed theology goes far past that. The start of the Reformation, those who are really kind of driving what would be known as reformed theology, there's three Cs. First one, obviously, Calvinism, right?

The five points of Calvinism. The second one is confessionalism. What we're talking about is a reformed confession that helps structure the way in which we understand the explanation of the Bible. A confession is what we literally say we believe.

So traditionally, you're talking about the Westminster Confession, theocast we hold to the London Baptist Confession. Those are examples that traditionally the reformed held to the Belgic Confession, the Westminster Confession, or the 1689 London Baptist Confession.

And then the third C is the covenants or covenantalism. Not just like, oh yeah, I believe in the covenants that are in the Bible, but we understand the Bible to be structured around really two covenants or by covenantalism.

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

Law-Gospel Distinction and the Ordinary Means of Grace

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

And then the last very defining moment of reformed theology is what we say the ordinary means. This is our understanding of sanctification. This is our understanding of God's interaction with his church.

Ordinary means what that traditionally means within the reformed faith is the public preaching and teaching of his word, the sacraments, so the Lord's table and baptism and then prayer. These are the means that God gives his church to give them grace to strengthen their faith and to grow and protect them.

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.

So those five points, you can even say the five points of reformed theology are Calvinism, confessional, covenantal, law gospel, and the ordinary means of grace. So when someone says they're Calvinistic, but they're dispensational, they're not reformed.

They're Calvinistic. 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.

God sovereignly saves us, and the whole Bible is about the story of God's redemption. We trust in God's means to grow us and to strengthen us, not our own spiritual disciplines, not our Bible reading plans, not anything that we do that can manipulate God.

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. 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.

What does it mean to be reformed? It's much more than the five solas, and it's much more than the five points of Calvinism. 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.