in the emerging church writers i see an unfortunate disdain for traditional theology. the problem FV folks present hits closer to home for me because in a lot of ways it is a working out of the inconsistencies in our own tradition. it didn’t take long after being convinced of the infant baptism position before i wondered about why children don’t partake in the supper. and this tension is not imaginary. we can see it in the half-way covenant controversy that edwards got tangled up in.

from what i can tell the most important aspects of the NPP do not conflict with our standards and are good biblical correctives. i have some (honest) questions still with the methodology of Wright (sometimes he seems to be saying to other NT historians ‘my construal of Jesus and Paul is just as plausible as yours plus it is orthodox’) as well as his definition of the righteousness of God (i read the section in what st. paul really said three times and it was still fuzzy). but like i said before, i am open to the possibility that the reformers were wrong in the way they interpreted Paul and i learned that i should be so from them. i don’t think they were wrong, maybe they left out some important stuff but so far i keep liking them more and more.

where does enns fit in in this mess for me? nowhere. enns’ class was at the same time a sigh of relief for me, answering some silly problems one runs into with a chicago-styled doctrine of scripture and at the same time a ‘well of course’ especially in his explanation of the NT’s use of the OT. the only slight tension i can see is in the way he talks about ‘evidence.’ calvin and the reformers do not exclude the possibility of ‘natural theology’ when it is sanctified by the primacey of revelation, calvin’s scripture glasses. as far as i can tell this means that there is some give and take (enns might say ‘conversation’?) when we read evidence through the lens of scripture because we all must admit that our understanding of scripture is sometimes shallow, we like to put those sun-shade clip-ons on the glasses to help us make sense of it. but ‘evidence’ is not neutral either and often it is pointy and aimed at the reliability of revelation. so in the end enns doesn’t resolve all the tension for me. maybe just a lot of unneccesary tension.

re: ‘the tradition,’the real question for me is whether i want to embrace the evangelical or puritanical side of the westminster presbyterian tradition. sure, nevin points some ways forward out of the whitfieldian trajectory but i want to honor that evangelical side if it is really in there or join a church more suitable to my theological tastes. i still haven’t studied our standards enough to say where i’ll come out. but i feel like i should if i am going to be ordained in the PCA. this is an ongoing question for me. i try to counter this feeling with the hope that westminster is broad enough to have the evangelical and continental-leaning calvinists under the same umbrella but that is a question only my conscience can answer after i have really read WCF et al. i have great hopes that it is. i am very happy in the PCA, especially the congregation my wife and i are members of.

i should say what i have neglected to say in the other two comments about what i was calling the ‘old perspective.’ if westminster is an adequate theological document worthy of subscribing to and enforcing somewhat stringently against aberrations of the gospel, why is it necessary to join up with theologians and pastors who think it isn’t worth the paper its preserved on in many places, forging a new statement of faith with them. there is something curious about all of this. i’m not for anathematizing baptists or anything, i just have a weird feeling about pan-evangelical statements.

by the way i thought both of the poems above were funny, even stephen’s. this is so long and…confused. sorry. procrastinating again.

Raca!!!

There is much within the writings of those who are undoubtably well within the bounds of “the tradition,” nay, who are the giants of our tradition, that goes completely ignored when folks say that certain of our fellows are outside the bounds of “the tradition.” Was this not the point of Enns’ inaugural address?
All this is to say that I do not think that is as simple as saying that this group is preserving “the tradition” while this other group is abandoning it.
Nor do I want anyone thinking that my previous sarcastic comments and snide remarks were in any way me rushing to the aid of Stephen Young. I have no interest in defending Stephen, nor do I wish to be associated with him in any way. Quite the contrary. In my estimation, Stephen is a rather fitting object of ridicule and his denigration is a worthwhile endeavor, to be sure. I mean, just look at him….
Blessings,
David

in all of this i have tried to avoid simplistic middle way arguing. i do not think the synthesis is always the best route to take. i am trying not to say side a is wrong here, side b is wrong there, something in the middle is right. i only meant to say what has bothered me lately.

on the relevancy of the reformers, i couldn’t agree more with what you said, but would only add that their fresh approach drew from the old wells of Scripture and the church fathers as many have pointed out. this may be my reformed blinder showing but i have yet to come accros any emphasis of the reformers that is not also in the church fathers. i am sure there is stuff but the more i read augustine and calvin the more i see them as saying the same things. certainly there is some development especially in the soteriology. one way of putting it is that i don’t want to use the new wine old wineskin model for thinking of the debates going on in our denomination. that is how we thought of things in my charismatic church background with a culture that i think ignores our communion with saints in ages past. we have to be faithful to them as we do to the contemporary world we live in. and as we all agree, faithful to Scripture.

i recently came accross a saying of Christ unique to Matthew (who seems to be obsessed with Scribes): “And he said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’” 13:52. Maybe that is all I mean to say.

i think we agree. i didn’t mean to attack relevance, only relevance sans faithfulness to our tradition, or a relevance for relevance’s sake.

mark—good call.

stephen young—i repent for my being eager to write a theme song. it seemed to work for cheers.

jed—when you said “to the extent that the old is shoved away for the new in a forging of relevant christianity,” i was wondering what you thought of that in relationship to luther, calvin, turretin or the westminster divines. weren’t their theological formulations inherently relevant to their context? it seems that we have made a false dichotomy between “truth” and “relevance” to the extent that you have to sacrifice one for the sake of the other. that is wrong to do. the gospel writers didn’t sacrific truth, but all were very relevant to the communities and cultures that they were writing to…yet they were different. wouldn’t that be a good model to follow?

on the other hand, to the extent that the old time religion somehow loses the excitement, the abundant life that Chirstianity is to exemplify, sure, cut away the dead branches. prune away Lord! (just let me hang on for a few more years and i swear i’ll start bearing some fruit.) thus i am with our confession in thinking that no councils or synods be our ultimate norm.

what i see going on in the not-so-real world of web logs is disappointing on both sides. suspicion reigns supreme. those who are for or sympathetic to ‘new perspectives’ be it on paul, evangelism, the federal vision or postmodernity are suspicious that the old guard is out to push them out before understanding them. maybe their lack of understanding is partly our fault, maybe its because we are not listening to their worries or we have pushed the new on them smugly and then caricatured them as beligerants who aren’t hip enough to get what we are talking about. i think sometimes the old guard can live up to our caricatures. maybe we have given them the freedom to do so by not talking to them longer and being patient enough to listen. transfering from WTS to Union Theological Seminary in NY has made me very sympathetic to their ‘old perspective.’ they have historical reasons for the red flags that go up when they perceive that our standards are being given a head nod and then cutly placed aside. if this is what they feel is happening we have to be sympathetic for their alarm. if there is a problem with our standards we have ways of getting through it just like we did over six day creation. and we should be more than willing to go through that process without crying ‘bullie’ when we are taken to account for what we say.

on the other side, the old guard, should trust that when a sister or brother in our denomination claims that she or he has not forsaken our standards and has a clear conscience in subscribing to them that she or he is probably not lying. there may be real disagreements at the bottom of these debates but the call for charity should not be dismissed as a mouth gag. certainly there are pastors all through our denomination who do not understand what they have signed up for, might not really subscribe to everything in the confession and simply don’t know it. if we perceive inconsistencies we should have the grace to point them out with love and patience with the possibility that the confession needs to be altered.

well those are some of my thoughts. whatever. i am just procrastinating. only one paper and two exams to go.

I realize that the opinions of everyone who comments here are their own, and I am not trying to censor anyone’s free speech, but could I appeal to everyone to ratchet down the sarcasm. I know there are strong feelings on all “sides” of this issue, but we are probably not serving the cause of Christ with continued sarcasm. Just a thought.