beginnerChurch & pastoral life
A Letter to Church Leaders
The open letter that begins the series: the charge laid before pastors and elders, the three claims it rests on, and the pastoral care it asks for the people who have already used these methods. Start here if you are going to read only one thing.
- Lessons
- 5
- Time
- about 84 min
- Prerequisites
- None
- Source
- the treatise
By the end Be able to state the whole case the letter makes — what it asks of a church leader, on what ground, and what it does not ask — and answer the first objections it meets.
What you will work through
- 1The Open LetterThe whole case in one letter: work through the open letter to church leaders section by section, checking your understanding as you go.
- 2Grace Before ArgumentWhy the letter refuses to make its case until it has set grace down first — and what that order asks of anyone who teaches this.
- 3Human, Not PersonWhy the letter refuses the word "person" and stands on humanity instead — the history of that move, and the biology the argument rests on.
- 4Where God Attaches His ProtectionGenesis 9:6 and the image of God as a nature rather than a capacity — with the two passages usually raised against it, examined in the Hebrew.
- 5Six Requests to ShepherdsWhat the letter actually asks a church to do, in the order it asks it — plus the two objections a careful elder raises, and the call to turn back that closes the letter.
After this course
Next in “The whole case: the letter, its appendices and the tract”
The scriptural argument that the child conceived is a human being whom God defends — worked through text by text.
Next in “If you only do three”
The scriptural argument that the child conceived is a human being whom God defends — worked through text by text.