The Reformed Ninja

The Normative Evangelical Doctrine of the Church as “Mother” 1. Earliest known explicit Christian usage of the concept of the Church as our mother: From 2 Clement 2.1 (dated somewhere between the end of first half of the 1st Century and the first half of the second), commenting on Isaiah 54:1 and the "barren woman" (and so appears to be the earliest known Christian commentary on Isaiah 54:1), states that the prophet Isaiah "spoke of us, for our church ( ecclesia ) was barren before children were given to it" ( The Apostolic Fathers , 3rd Edition, tr. Michael Holmes). Also, from Cyprian (3rd Century, i.e. prior to Constantine): “No one can have God as Father who does not have the church as mother.” 2. Basic Scriptural data: (22) For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. (23) But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. (24) Now this may be interpret...

A.B. Simpson emphatically taught the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. It is uncertain if he was influenced by the Mercersburg Theology of Nevin and Schaff, who decisively repristinated the authentic Reformation doctrine of the Eucharist in America in the 19th Century, but it is certain that the authentic understanding of the classically Reformed and eminently Scriptural doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was heartily affirmed by Simpson. For not a bare, empty sign and symbol of an absent Christ, in the Eucharist one receives “a direct personal touch of God” (A.B. Simpson, The Significance of the Lord’s Supper, p. 9). The present study, then, will look at Simpson’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper as given in his short work, The Significance of the Lord’s Supper (abbreviated SLS ), and in his commentary on 1 Corinthians (from Chapter 8, on “The Ordinances of the Church,” from The Christ in the Bible Commentary , Book 3; abbreviated Ordinances ). To begin, it is worth noting that ...