The Tulip Driven Life

  Is it schismatic to leave a NAPARC church or denomination to form a church outside of NAPARC? No, it is not, certainly not inherently so.   Jeremiah Burroughs is helpful here. You do not have to agree with every point he makes or every detail to see that his framework is correct and beneficial. Many men remain in compromised Reformed and Presbyterian churches or denominations because their Elders heap false guilt upon them, groundlessly charging them with being schismatics, claiming that leaving a Reformed and Presbyterian Church that belongs to NAPARC (North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council, which includes many Reformed and Presbyterian denominations such as the PCA, OPC, ARP, RPCNA, URC, etc.) to join or find a new church or denomination that is not associated with NAPARC is tantamount to sinful division, fracturing the body of Christ, disturbing the peace and purity of the church, ipso facto declaring any and all in NAPARC to be a false or apostate church, ...

  Some comments on the distinct glories and callings of man and woman (male and female). I hope it is helpful for you all when we consider the calling of men and women and God's good design for each: Women in exceptional circumstances, such as filling in for men lost in mass casualties due to war, may be pressed into duty out of sheer desperation and to fill the void as best they can. But that is the point -- female rule and leadership is extraordinary. While God may gift some women to rule, that is not typical of most women but rare and extraordinary. It is one thing to say that a female ruler is a legitimate ruler (I would affirm that), but it is another thing to say that female rulers are desirable or the typical pattern and proper order that God has established (I would deny that, as I believe Scripture plainly does as well, along with our Reformed forefathers). Even Daneau, from what I have seen, would likewise grant the former but deny the latter, as he too saw it as extraor...

Calvin is helpful on 1 Cor. 11:3, and he makes a key distinction between the Spiritual realm and the civil/natural realm when it comes to man and woman and equality and inequality (a distinction we desperately need to be able to make again today in our churches and society) -- "Let us, for the present, take notice of those four gradations which he points out. God, then, occupies the first place: Christ holds the second place. How so? Inasmuch as he has in our flesh made himself subject to the Father, for, apart from this, being of one essence with the Father, he is his equal. Let us, therefore, bear it in mind, that this is spoken of Christ as mediator. He is, I say, inferior to the Father, inasmuch as he assumed our nature, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. There is somewhat more of difficulty in what follows. Here the man is placed in an intermediate position between Christ and the woman, so that Christ is not the head of the woman. Yet the same Apostle teache...