Schedule

God has not left us to wonder about what He is like and what He requires from us, but He has revealed Himself in both nature and Scripture. Yet while we can learn much about our Creator from the natural world, only Scripture can give us the message of salvation and serve as the final norm for faith and practice. This session will deal with the Christian doctrine of revelation. While touching on God’s revelation of Himself in creation, it will focus on the doctrine of special revelation and on the attributes of Scripture including sufficiency, authority, infallibility, and inerrancy, as well as the power God has invested in the Bible.

The great, holy, and glorious God revealed in Scripture is not merely one person and one essence; rather, He is one essence and three coeternal, coequal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This session will consider the Christian doctrine of God, focusing on the church’s historic confession that God is both one and three at the same time but not in the same sense. It will deal with common misunderstandings of the Trinity such as modalism and Arianism while discussing how the doctrine of the Trinity shapes our worship and piety.

No other religious faith has as high a view of human beings as Christianity, for we confess that men and women are made in the image of God. At the same time, no other faith so thoroughly understands the corruption of humanity, for we confess that we are all sinners in Adam. This session will present an overview of the biblical doctrine of man, looking at both our dignity and depravity, as well as touching on how the doctrine of the image of God informs us regarding gender differences and how obedience to Jesus Christ, the last Adam, alone allows us to achieve all that God has intended for human beings.

At the heart of the Christian faith is the God-man Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity who took on our humanity, lived a perfect life, died in the place of sinners, and rose from the dead on the third day for our justification. This session will present the Christian understanding of the person and work of Christ. It will consider the historic church’s understanding of the incarnation as outlined at the Council of Chalcedon, and it will examine the active obedience and passive obedience of Christ through the lens of His threefold office as our Prophet, Priest, and King.

Scripture contains the wonderful promise that all whom God justifies—declares righteous—He also glorifies—brings to eternal, resurrected life (Rom. 8:28–30). But our salvation begins not with our justification in time, but it extends to eternity past when God chose a people for Himself. This session will explore what we believe about how the Holy Spirit applies salvation to men and women through the ordo salutis, discussing election, predestination, calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification.

Anthony Carter, H.B. Charles, David Hall, and Burk Parsons.

God has purposed to bring about the salvation of individual sinners, but in saving individual sinners He does not leave us on our own. He unites us to Christ and in so doing unites us to everyone else who has been united to Christ by faith. God’s goal in our salvation is to create a holy people for Himself, a bride for His Son as He increasingly conforms us to the image of Jesus. This session will examine the Christian doctrine of the church, considering such issues as the church visible and invisible; the unity, apostolicity, and catholicity of the church; and the power and authority of the church.