A new book from the Village of Ritual and Morality

Seminary professor R. Scott Clark has coined phrases that justify sterile, ritualistic Village of Morality 'faith' and has now written a book about his coinages. Between himself quoting his own coinages on his blog and now his book about his coinages his coinages are destined to become part of all of our folk memory and tradition.

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Recovering the Reformed Confession
by Dr. R. Scott Clark


CONTENTS



Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xi

1. Whatever Became of Reformed Theology, Piety, and Practice? 1

Part I: The Crisis

2. The Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty 39
3. The Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience 71

Part 2: The Recovery

4. Recovering a Reformed Identity (1) 119
5. Recovering a Reformed Identity (2) 153
6. The Joy of Being Confessional 193
7. Recovering Reformed Worship 227
8. Whatever Happened to the Second Service? 293

Epilogue: Predestination is Not Enough 343

Index 347

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So the first coinage we have here is:

The Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty (or QIRC, for short, the way Clark prefers to write it, because, you know, it is such a part of the collective consciousness and language that we all know what the four letters stand for at this point). So this QIRC basically is a cry for help from a professor who has not the Spirit. Those of us who have the Spirit need no 'illegitimate' or legitimate 'quest' for certainty. We have certainty. We have the Holy Spirit inside us. We have God in us. It is what makes the world (Village of Morality, Clark's neighborhood), our Old Man, and the devil not real happy with us.

The second coinage we are given is:

The Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience (or, QIRE for short). Another cry for help from Clark as he sees Christians all around him who seem to hear music he can't hear (and I would follow with the metaphor of dancing but that would scandalize Mr. Clark who I'm sure has a few really bad experiences from his past of attempting to dance at a bar or a wedding or something and knows that it is really embarrassing and not something that is legitimate and is something he will not have anything to do with. But there's always structured dances like the waltz! Still, though, there is always the ever present fear of getting 'excited'...so much to fear in this experience thing... For real Christians though the reality is experience means battle. Spiritual warfare. Once regenerated by the Word and the Spirit (not man and ritual) you find yourself in battle by default. The devil doesn't bother with his sleeping captives in his kingdom. He confronts God's own who are awakened by the Spirit and looking directly at ol' Little Horn himself. The devil doesn't like being 'seen' by God's own, but there's nothing he can do about it, really, as long as God's own have the armor of God and use it.

So much for QIRC and QIRE.