Christ the Center

Jim Cassidy joins Camden Bucey to discuss the Gospel of Mark and a newly recorded Reformed Academy course, The Gospel of Mark: A Study in the Kingdom. They consider how Mark identifies Jesus as the divine King and teaches the nature of his kingdom through a fast-moving account of Christ’s ministry.
The conversation explores faith and union with Christ, Mark’s high Christology, exorcisms as signs of Christ’s conquest over Satan, Jesus’s cleansing of the unclean, the covenantal transition signaled in Mark 7, and the two-stage healing of the blind man as a mirror of the disciples’ partial understanding. They also discuss why the kingdom advances through the cross and resurrection rather than worldly power—and how that hope steadies an anxious church.
Resources
Reformed Academy
Christ the Center 1000 Summit
Reformed Forum newsletter

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:57 Reformed Academy courses with Jim Cassidy
04:03 Christ the Center episode 1000 summit
10:00 The Gospel of Mark as a study in the kingdom
15:14 Mark’s rapid narrative and distinctive emphasis
18:31 Faith, healing, and union with Christ
21:13 Mark’s high Christology
26:30 Exorcism and the conquest of Satan’s kingdom
32:58 Jesus, purity, and the covenantal transition
37:40 Scripture and tradition in Mark 7
42:35 The two-stage healing of the blind man
47:45 Victory through the cross and suffering
50:52 Rendering to Caesar and to God
55:45 Resurrection hope for an anxious church
59:57 Peter’s confession and the structure of Mark
62:14 Conclusion
Mentioned in this episode:
Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX
Christ the Center 1000 Summit
Christ the Center 1000
Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Bradley G. Green joins Camden Bucey to discuss What Is Critical Theory?: A Concise Christian Analysis. They trace the Frankfurt School’s Marxist roots and explain why thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse turned from a narrowly economic account of oppression toward culture, institutions, authority, family, and religion.
The conversation evaluates critical theory as a counterfeit religious vision with its own accounts of creation, sin, redemption, and eschatology. Drawing on Cornelius Van Til, Green shows how unbelieving thought oscillates between rationalism and irrationalism; drawing on Henry Van Til, he explains why culture is “religion externalized.”
Resources
What Is Critical Theory?: A Concise Christian Analysis
Bradley G. Green at Southern Seminary
Christ Overall

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
04:30 Introducing What Is Critical Theory?
08:14 Marxism after the failed German revolution
10:43 The major Frankfurt School thinkers
12:35 Culture, oppression, and the long march through the institutions
15:54 Critical theory as a counterfeit religion
19:06 What the critical theorists see—and miss
21:56 Creation, givenness, and the autonomous individual
24:05 Sin relocated from the heart to the system
25:18 Marcuse’s vision of sexual liberation
29:42 Utopian hope and Adorno’s “Grand Hotel Abyss”
33:11 Walter Benjamin and a “messianic rupture”
36:45 Repressive tolerance and the authoritarian personality
42:35 Van Til on rationalism and irrationalism
46:31 Culture as religion externalized
49:22 Pastoral and educational applications
53:55 Using the book for personal and group study
56:20 Conclusion
Mentioned in this episode:
Christ the Center 1000
Christ the Center 1000 Summit
Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX
Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Kevin DeYoung joins Camden Bucey to discuss Church History for Everyone, Volume 1: The Story of Christianity from the Fall of Jerusalem to the Dawn of the Reformation. They consider why Christianity is inseparable from history and how the story of the church testifies to Christ’s promise to build and preserve his people by his Word and Spirit.
The conversation explores how Christians can remember faithful men and women without lapsing into hagiography—or reducing the past to a catalogue of failures. Camden and Kevin also discuss monasticism, the preservation of learning and liturgy, Protestant retrieval of medieval theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux, and the figures who will appear in the forthcoming second volume.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:50 Christ the Center 1000 summit update
12:55 Introducing Church History for Everyone
15:51 Conversation with Kevin DeYoung
17:30 From Sunday school lectures to a two-volume history
20:58 Why Christianity is inseparable from history
23:48 Church history as family history
26:38 Beyond hagiography and “warts only” history
30:57 Choosing characters and telling the church’s story
35:30 What Protestants can learn from monasticism
39:53 Recovering the medieval church
43:59 Previewing volume 2
46:53 Conclusion
Resources
Church History for Everyone, Volume 1
Clearly Reformed
Mentioned in this episode:
Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX
Christ the Center 1000 Summit
Christ the Center 1000
Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Jared Poulton joins Camden Bucey to discuss Van Til’s Counseling Movement: A Critical Analysis of Jay Adams and Biblical Counseling. They trace how Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetics supplied key theological instincts for Jay Adams and the modern biblical counseling movement, including the God-relatedness of every human problem, dependence upon divine revelation, and confidence in Scripture’s sufficiency for pastoral ministry.
The conversation also examines tensions within contemporary biblical counseling. Camden and Jared consider the antithesis, common grace, the relation of the book of nature to the book of Scripture, and the danger of either rejecting all extra-biblical knowledge or baptizing secular methods without sufficient theological scrutiny. Throughout, they argue that faithful counseling should serve the church’s disciple-making mission and bring every claim about human life under the authoritative framework of God’s Word.
Resources
Van Til’s Counseling Movement
Institute for Reformed Biblical Counseling

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:12 Jared Poulton’s path into biblical counseling
09:12 What is biblical counseling?
17:44 The sufficiency of Scripture and pastoral counsel
23:09 CCEF, David Powlison, and Van Til
27:29 A Van Tilian foundation and an identity crisis
32:48 Competing trajectories in biblical counseling
41:02 Robert K. Rudolph and Jay Adams
44:02 Three streams that shaped Adams
50:57 God is man’s environment
55:58 Presuppositions and borrowed terminology
61:37 The antithesis and secular psychology
67:06 Scripture’s framework for counseling
72:59 Common grace and the two-book approach
75:56 Counseling in service of the church’s mission
77:42 Conclusion

Mentioned in this episode:
Christ the Center 1000 Live in Austin, TX
Christ the Center 1000 Summit
Christ the Center 1000
Christ the Center 1000 Summit

Hebrews never pits the covenants against one another as law versus gospel; it presents them as grace and grace—the same house, the same people, the same promise. Yet the old was always preparatory: shadow giving way to substance, promise to fulfillment. Marcus A. Mininger traces that organic development and shows why the unity of the one covenant is precisely what makes Hebrews’ warning so urgent. The address closes where the letter does—on persevering within the covenant and resting in the sole sufficiency of Christ.
Dr. Marcus A. Mininger is professor of New Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, with research on Paul and the General Epistles—including a forthcoming study of the warning passages in Hebrews.
Delivered at the 2026 Reformed Forum Theology Conference, “The Covenant of Grace: One Savior, One People, One Purpose,” at Lakeland Church in Gurnee, Illinois, on September 26, 2026.
Watch this address: https://youtu.be/DMhQflaD8PM
Watch the full conference: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJykAlOwqPCA
reformedforum.org
Mentioned in this episode:
Christ the Center 1000
Christ the Center 1000