Reformation is needed in almost every day.

If Paul, within years of founding the Corinthian congregation,

needs to see them reformed, we can't be surprised that churches need reforming regularly in history of the church.

Sometimes that reform is more in the nature of a revitalization,

but I think people have, especially in America, been too content to be satisfied with entertainment and with shallowness.

And we need a seriousness about God, about Christ, and about His Word,

and I think to be drawn again to a passionate interest in the Word is going to take a major reformation of the church today.

My hope is that this series will serve the church by causing people to reflect on what the church ought to be according to the Word of God.

The necessity of reforming the church, a teaching series with W. Robert Godfrey. Visit liganyear.org slash teaching series to learn more.

Christians are quite willing to affirm the sovereignty of God,

but if we push the discussion to the relationship of God's sovereignty, for example, to the doctrine of election,

in a very short period of time, there will be a very serious controversy about the nature of God.

Welcome to renewing your mind on this Tuesday, by Lee Webb.

If you're relatively new to our program, you may have heard us refer to reform theology and wonder what is reform theology.

How is it different from, say, an evangelical view of what the Bible teaches, or the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church?

Well, we just heard a hint there from Dr. R. C. Sproul. The sovereignty of God is a centerpiece of reform thinking, but let's dig deeper. Here's R.C.

In our first session, we saw that reform theology is a theology.

And now I want to suggest to you that reform theology is a systematic theology.

It's been one of my privileges and my lifetime to be able to teach the discipline of systematic theology at the seminary level.

And I know in this day and age, with the advent of existential philosophy, for example, there's been this growing antipathy or an allergy, as it were, against the whole idea of systems.

And sometimes there's good reason for that. Part of the concern that people have is that we know what happens when people take a system of philosophy and bring it over to the pages of the Bible, and then try to force everything that the Bible says into that system.

Now, the idea of systematic thinking goes way back in church history, but even in the period of the enlightenment, with the advent of the modern scientific method, the philosophers of those days advocated a method for science that they called the analytical method of study,

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