What is Reformed Theology? Dr. Kevin DeYoung describes how Reformed Theology informs our view of God’s sovereignty, mercy, and ultimately, the gospel.
It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of Reformed theology for an institution called Reformed Theological Seminary. We believe that God revealed himself to us in the Scriptures, and we believe that Reformed theology best captures a faithful summary of what the Bible teaches. There’s a lot of different ways to think about Reformed theology and for some people it’s a great word, it’s a wonderful term, they love it: “Yes, I want that with all my heart.” And other people maybe aren’t quite sure what what it means and maybe they’re even a little nervous about it. We believe that Reformed theology best captures a faithful summary of what the Bible teaches.
We Serve a Big God
You could certainly trace it historically to John Calvin and others who have come out of that wing of the Reformation. More recently, some people have talked about some of the tenants as Big God Theology. Now, certainly there’s more nuance to it than that. But that does begin to get at the significance and the centrality of Reformed theology for an institution like RTS. We want to have a view of a big God because the God of the Bible is a big God who is sovereign over everything in our lives. He’s sovereign over salvation. He’s sovereign over presidents and politicians. He rules over it all, and he doesn’t rule over it with an arbitrary iron fist, but he rules over it by the wonderful doctrine of providence, which means he is pro-us. He is for us, for his people in Christ, all of these things working together for our good.
God Has Sovereign Mercy
We are unable to save ourselves. We need a God who has done all of it from start to finish to save us from our sins.So we have a big, massive, sovereign God, and with that you have a God of big and massive sovereign mercy. We’re not ashamed at all to say Reformed theology makes God very big, and it makes us very small. And we think that’s the way to do ministry. That’s the way to present the good news to men, women, and children who desperately need to hear it. We are unable to save ourselves. We need a God who has done all of it from start to finish to save us from our sins. And that gets to the heart of the good news and really the heart of what it means to be Reformed.
