Editors:

A. T. B. McGowan, editor

Director of the Rutherford Centre for Reformed Theology (www.rcrt.scot)

John McClean, deputy editor

Vice Principal of Christ College, Sydney (https://christcollege.edu.au)

Series Description:

The Rutherford Centre for Reformed Theology (RCRT), based in Scotland, has established The Ecclesiology Project to enable some serious reconsideration of the Reformed doctrine of the church. The project will be carried out in partnership with the Theological Commission of the World Reformed Fellowship (WRF), which is also currently engaged in a study on ecclesiology.

On many of the doctrines of the Christian faith, there is broad agreement within the community of Reformed Christians. If we were considering the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, the doctrines that make up our understanding of salvation (effectual calling, regeneration, justification, adoption, repentance, etc.) then the disagreements among us would be minor. When it comes to the doctrine of the church, however, there is no such agreement. We believe that there is a great need today for clarity in our understanding of the church, not least its nature and purpose.

In the seventeenth century, the ministers and theologians who wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith had a very high view of the church. They affirmed that the church is "the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation." In the twentieth century, many people have a very low view of the church, seeming to regard the church almost as an optional extra. Within the community of churches which trace their origins back to the sixteenth-century Reformation, both of these views are represented, as well as everything in between. How then should we formulate a doctrine of the church that is true to our roots and that is also fit for purpose in the twenty-first century?

In this series, there will be several monographs on the subject, two of them being on aspects of the unity of the church, which we believe to be a vital topic in our divided church situation. Given our Reformed beliefs that the church should be confessional and that its worship should conform to the Regulative Principle (the idea that we may only do in worship what God commands), we are including in the series the WRF Statement of Faith (a new Reformed confessional statement) and a new edition of the Reformed Book of Common Order. Also included will be the papers from the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, which took place at the beginning of June 2020 and was focused on the subject of ecclesiology. We hope in due course to add other volumes to the series.

We hope that you will both enjoy and benefit from this series.