February 2018 Ordained Servant

From the Editor. With the loosening of many doctrines and practices in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in America, since Vatican II, many Protestants are naïve about what hasn’t changed, especially the doctrine of justification. The anathemas, aimed at this Protestant doctrine, remain in force, and the confusion between justification and sanctification endures. So, should a confessional Protestant or evangelical marry a practicing Roman Catholic? Andy Wilson offers a prudent biblical answer in “Why Reformed and Evangelical Christians Should Not Marry Roman Catholics.”

Matthew Cserhati presents a straightforward biblical approach to evangelizing Roman Catholics in his article: “How to Reach Roman Catholics with the Gospel.” As a former Roman Catholic, he has a great deal of experience in wisely presenting the gospel to his friends and others in that body.

Danny Olinger continues his biography of Geerhardus Vos with its penultimate chapter, “Geerhardus Vos: Whither Westminster and Retirement.” He covers the reasons why Vos never taught at Westminster Theological Seminary, Vos’s relationship with Machen, his retirement, and death. I was especially appreciative of the space Olinger gives to Vos’s poetry, an aspect of Vos’s talents and interests of which few are aware.

The recent spate of Confederate statue removals makes Darryl Hart’s evenhanded review of The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee by R. David Cox especially poignant.

My poem this month, “Shadowbrook,” is a takeoff on William Butler Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Shadowbrook is a real place in Washington, New Hampshire, which I built as a retreat, sans electricity, running water, or cell coverage.

The lighthouse on this month’s cover is the Chatham Lighthouse on Cape Cod in Chatham, Massachusetts. Shore erosion forced the town to move the lighthouse back about one hundred yards. The day I took this picture we saw a Snowy Owl on frozen Bass River, where my sister lives.

FROM THE ARCHIVES “ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH”

Subject Index

• "A Primer on Vatican II." (Danny E. Olinger) 19 (2010): 80-87
• "What to Think of the New Pope" (D. G. Hart and John R. Muether) 23 (2014): 81-86.

Ordained Servant exists to help encourage, inform, and equip church officers for faithful, effective, and God-glorifying ministry in the visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its primary audience is ministers, elders, and deacons of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as well as interested officers from other Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Through high-quality editorials, articles, and book reviews, we will endeavor to stimulate clear thinking and the consistent practice of historic, confessional Presbyterianism.