In all that we do, God calls us to seek the Scriptures for guiding directives for what we may or may not write online. Scripture and Scripture alone should bind our consciences. This is especially so with regard to what God requires of us in our stewardship of the internet. If we engage others online, we should do so acknowledging the many dangers that we will have to navigate. We should be slow to listen to the loudest voices, as they are often driven by impulsive zeal and an inflated sense of self-importance. 

There is something innate in the fallen hearts of men that gives them an insatiable desire to seek to bind the consciences of others on just about every given matter. Whether it is food preferences, education, parenting, or environmental considerations, most people love to bind the consciences of others to that to which their own consciences are bound. This is most notably seen in the way in which people assert their opinions about what others should be doing in a pandemic. It has also manifested itself in much of the social commentary about perceived social injustices. In all these things, it is right for believers to appeal to Scripture as the only rule of faith and life. For good reason, Protestants have long found Martin Luther’s bold declaration at the Diet of Worms to resonate powerfully in their souls. When commanded to recant his teaching, Luther famously stated,
“Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.”
Conscience Binding
However, the notion of conscience binding is often more subtle among believers than it was in the day of the Reformer’s contentions with the Roman Catholic Church. Today, believers who adhere faithfully to the teaching of Scripture on biblical sexual ethics or socio-political theories frequently seek to bind the consciences of other believers who faithfully adhere to the same teaching of Scripture on these matters. Now, it is no longer enough that one confesses to believe the Scriptures about its teaching on sexual sin and racial unity in Christ. If one does not speak out as loudly, vehemently, and consistently as another online he is excoriated as not have true “convictions” about these matters. It usually plays out in the following way:
A vocal opponent of various forms of compromise and falsehood calls other believers to action. However, the action is generally unspecified. It is packaged with rhetoric about “courage,” “boldness,” or “taking a stand.” It riles up a certain group of individuals who then begin to echo the rally cry of a pressure group. It manifests itself through individuals in just about every denomination. What it often amounts to, however, is a self-admiring attempt to bind the consciences of other believers to speak out in the same way and to the same degree as said individual is speaking out on a social media platform or in a blog post. Under the auspice of “courage,” the rally cry goes out with as much conscience binding force as can be mustered.
This raises several important questions. Do we really grasp the nature of media ecology? Does God expect every believer to take to social media to bodily proclaim opposition to every unbiblical ideology and movement? Is it a lack of biblical conviction that leads others to avoid contention in our interactions with others online? What biblical principles ought to be guiding Christians in the way in which they write and speak publicly about these matters? How should Scripture govern the spirit with which we interact online on significant yet controversial issues that affect both the church and society? These are not easy questions to answer but they are worthy of our reflection.
Media Ecology
Most of us have not adequately reflected on the nature of media ecology. We have ideas and opinions about social media. We employ rhetorical figures of speech such as “dumpster fire” or “train wreck” when speaking about social media. We acknowledge the snare of being drawn into controversy with people we don’t really know and who would not have been, in bygone generations, without the sphere of our moral proximity. We understand the way in which social media can monopolize our time and energy; however, we have not yet fully grasped the “interplay between humans, technology, media, and the environment, with the aim of increasing awareness of mutual effects” (Oxford Bibliographies). I am not sure that any of us will fully have grasped the phenomenon of social media before we die. It is a lightening-fast moving, decentralized, ocean of media evolution and social interaction. Recognizing this should, at least, give us pause about what, when, how, and why we may say something online.
In 2006 Greg Reynolds wrote what is arguably the most careful treatment of media ecology at that time from a thoroughly Christian and Reformed perspective, The Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures. A look back at that work in 2022 is a fascinating sociological exercise. Reynolds wrote his book on the internet frontier. Facebook was in its early stages of development and Twitter did not yet exist. It was a different time. Chatrooms existed, but many us us quickly realized that we did not have the time or interest to jump into the fray of debate in them. The most heated contentions online were usually those found in the comment sections of a blog post. To look back at how much social media has changed the landscape of our world is worthy of deep reflection, expecially as it relates to our use of it in regard to engagement in theological controversy.
What, if any, responsibility do Christians have to make use of online platforms for the propagation and defense of the truth? What does God require of them? This question may sound strange, coming from someone who has spent 15 years writing and publishing articles, blog posts, podcasts, and social media content online. In short, I do not believe that God requires anyone to have a social media account, let alone to have to publish their convictions and opinions about anything in that forum–especially not in response to conscience binding calls to “courageous stands for truth.” Does God call us to take courageous stand for truth? Absolutely. Does he require us to do it on a social media feed or in a blog post? Absolutely not.
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Few of us will ever be in a position where we’ll need to lay out the details of an entire theological system. Most of the time, we’ll be content to rely on our confessions and the work of good theologians past and present. 

Where do we begin in our theology? The answer may seem obvious: We begin with God. Theology, after all, is talking about God; that’s literally what the word means. But things get a little more complicated when we get around to developing a formal theological system.
Let me illustrate. We recently had a new driveway poured at our house. But, of course, this meant that we first had to get rid of the old one. We assumed this would be something of an ordeal, but it turns out that a mini-forklift made short work of it. In a matter of minutes, great chunks of cement had been levered out, removed, and piled up for disposal.
God forbid we ever have to remove the new driveway laid in place of that old one. If we do, the job won’t be nearly as easy. This time, workers laid down steel rebar before they poured concrete, to reinforce the slab and increase its tensile strength. Any attempt to move (or remove) it will meet with stiff resistance.
As in driveways, so in theology, not all foundations are equal. (I know, a driveway slab isn’t really a foundation but work with me here.) When we preach we begin where our passage begins and point to Christ as we expound the Scriptures. When we evangelize we may start with someone’s felt needs in order to expose their heart’s deep longing for fellowship with God. When answering theological questions informally we will probably connect the question asked with the bigger picture of who God is and what he’s doing. But when we lay out a system of theology, whether in print or in the classroom, where and how we begin affects everything else that we say. First words call for care and precision.
And if we want care and precision, we do well to listen to the Reformed scholastics. During the era of Protestant orthodoxy (1560 to 1725 or thereabouts), Reformation theology underwent a process of translation. The message that had been preached in pulpits and debated both in public and in print now had to be formalized and organized in such a way that it could be confessed by congregations and taught in classrooms. As theologians took up this gargantuan task, they had to make sure that a well-laid foundation was in place before they tried to build anything on it. (If you want the details, read Richard Muller’s four-volume magnum opus Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics.)
So, when Reformed scholastic theologians taught and wrote about theology, how did they lay the foundation? More specifically, how did they formulate their first words in such a way that the project didn’t collapse under its own weight? The answer is, they started with Scripture… and with God.
Calvin, from whom the Reformed orthodox inherited a great deal, famously began his Institutes by discussing the relationship between knowledge of God and of humanity. “No one,” he suggests, “can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he ‘lives and moves.’” It is impossible, however, for anyone to achieve “a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face.” Only then can he “descend from contemplating God to scrutinize himself.” But here’s the trick: because of human finitude and fallenness, we need Scripture to arrive at true knowledge of God. (We also need the Spirit, of course, but let’s stay focused.)
The scholastics followed Calvin’s lead as they developed the notion of the dual foundation of our theology—God and Scripture. It was standard fare (for example, in the Leiden Synopsis [1625], Turretin’s Institutes [1679-85], and van Mastricht’s Theoretical-Practical Theology [1698-99]) to begin with Scripture before discussing God. Let’s take Girolamo Zanchi (1516-1590) as an example of these Reformed orthodox thinkers.
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No one remembers the furniture in the throne room. They remember the king on the throne. This is the end of all the enemies of God. They are destined to be a means for the exaltation of Jesus to the place of highest prominence. Do you want to know the purpose of human history? It is designed by the Father, as the master interior designer, to exalt his Son to the place of highest prominence (Eph. 1:9–10).

The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”Psalm 110:1
I always say that my biggest influences are three Johns and three Toms—John Owen, John Calvin, John Calvin, Thomas Watson, Thomas Brooks, and Thomas Boston. And even though I’d like to say of the six, my biggest influence is John Calvin, it is really John Owen. I wish I could say that I’ve read or planned to read the collected works of all six, but my forty-five years tell me that I must choose. And so I’ve begun the gradual and daily reading of one of them. I chose John Owen.
Out of all of them, Owen stands above the rest as a Christ-maximalist. But he arrived there being a thorough-going Trinitarian. And by that, I mean that he was no Christo-monist. He did not decide to focus on Jesus because it was cool, trendy, or hip. He didn’t hop on the Christo-centric bandwagon because he read about it in a popular book by a platformed1 author. Instead, Owen is thoroughly Trinitarian in his thought, as all good Christian theologians have and should be. But as he pondered the Trinity, he found that there is a Christ-centrality woven into the godhead. The Father is most enamored with his Son. And the Holy Spirit is heaven-bent on glorifying and extolling the person and work of the Son.2 And so, Owen is theologically bent on Christo-centrism, not because he is committed to Christ over the other members of the Trinity, but because he is thoroughly Trinitarian in all his theology.
For example, I have four sons. I have never thought that they should be just like me, though, inevitably, they will bear my likeness, for better and for worse (I’ve warned them about this). But I want them all to be the kind of men that I would be honored to call a friend. And that is all what they currently are—noble men who you and I would be honored to know, honored to call friends. And yet, if you were friends to my sons, you would only know them as they are. But if you knew them, and knew what I had to say about them, you would love them more than if you only knew them without knowing what I had to say about them.
To know a man is one thing; to hear what his father has to say about him is quite another. And this is because a father’s love for his sons, a father’s bestowal of fatherly honor, is an addition to a son’s glory, no matter how great that son’s glory may be. And in this, I think we arrive at some of the beauty behind our trinitarian theology. It is one thing to know the Son. It is an additional thing, an additive and greater thing, to hear the Father gush over his Son.
The Greatest Psalm
The book of Psalms is the most quoted Old Testament book in the Bible. Psalm 110 is the most quoted chapter of the Old Testament in the New Testament. Psalm 110:1 is the most quoted Old Testament verse quoted in the New Testament. Jesus, Paul, the author of Hebrews, and Peter all chose Psalm 110:1 to speak clearly and definitively about the person and work of Jesus, the Christ. And it is a psalm that has become even dearer to me over the past few years.
I’ve made it a personal practice to spend time daily in the psalms and learn to sing as many of them as possible from memory. Aside from the benefits of meditating on God’s Word and singing it back to him in praise, I noticed something consistent throughout Christian history, something begun from the earliest days recorded in Acts. Whenever we read of Christians imprisoned for their faith, we find them often spending their time of imprisonment in prayer and singing psalms. I thought to myself, “If I’m ever imprisoned for my faith (and I’d like to live my life in such a way as this might be possible), I don’t know any psalms to sing.” And so I decided I would learn some psalms by heart, in case I ever had to gladden the walls of a prison cell.
And that, of course, led me to decide where to start with 150 to choose from. And so I asked myself, “Which psalms did Jesus and apostles think were most important?” Clearly, the psalm at the top of the list is Psalm 110. So I started there. Not a week goes by that I don’t sing Psalm 110 a few times. And I say that because this devotion is not just born out of the academic fact of its prodigious use in the New Testament but also out of its frequent place in my life.
And to return to the emphasis of John Owen, few verses in the entire Bible tell us of what the Father thinks of the Son. And in meditating on Psalm 110:1, we have the opportunity to join our heavenly Father in his delight in his Son.
Psalm 110:1 was a mystery to the Jewish scholars who studied it before the incarnation. How could there be a “lord” who sat at the right hand of “the LORD” who was also a greater king than King David, a king that even David would call Lord? The general consensus was that this was a reference to the coming Messiah. And they were right. Jesus (as well as Peter, Paul, and the author of Hebrews after him) unequivocally teaches that he is the mysterious Lord that David wrote about in Psalm 110:1. So, to use New Testament divine familial nouns to describe what is going on in Psalm 110:1 is to say, “The Father said to the Son, “sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” In this brief and profound verse, we see two things that God the Father says about God the Son.
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