Always Reforming

I got home yesterday to find my copy of Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology had arrived in the mail. I quickly opened its pages to read the preface and then the introduction. It was refreshing to read Frame write in the preface, Reformed theology has often professed to be "always reforming" (semper reformanda), but it has often been to focused too much on its past achievements (reformata) at the expense of seeking new insight(reformanda). How very true. It was this thought that enticed me to purchase the work. A few pages later in the introduction A.T.B. McGowan writes, In our twenty first century we face many complex issues, which earlier generations have not been required to face and it will not do merely to restate old ideas in the old familiar words and try hide away from the modern world. It simply is not an option to create little communities of people who attempt to live as people did in earlier centuries, using seventeenth-century language and seventeenth-century Bibles and circling the wagons against the outside world. Apart from anything else, we do our children a serious disservice if we fail to address the issues that present the most serious challenges to their remaining in our churches.
McGowan goes on to state he has no problem with the Westminster Standards and neither do I. But, its time to consider writing new standards that will address todays issues. Amen to that.
I'm anxious now to delve into this work of several authors that explores the issues of todays church with the underpinnings of semper reformanda.