Too Narrow a Gospel?
Joel Hunter of the Boar’s Head Tavern gang skewers the mushiness of disects the declaration from the Together for the Gospel conference, pointing out that apparently being “for” the Gospel actually means listing everything you are not for in defense of a True Gospel that has so many different “essential centers” it must be orbiting in a tri-star solar system.
And a few posts later Josh Strodtbeck takes the tag to deliver the TKO.
EDIT on March 8: While I do think that Joel and Josh have some valid questions concerning the T4TG declaration, and I do share their concern that some conservative Reformed leaders are placing too many qualifications on what constitutes the “true Gospel,” after some reflection I find that I cannot support their tone of sarcasm and mockery. While I may disagree with some of the approach of the organizers of T4TG, they are all (as far as I know) sincere men of God striving their best to be good shepherds of the body of Christ. It is fair for us to interact with their statements. It is not fair, nor within the bounds of Christian charity, for us to impugn their motives.
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May 7th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Wow.
As far as ministry experience and education go, I’m but a diapered babe compared to Joel and Josh. Still, these posts are reminiscent of a smart-aleck teenager unnecessarily nitpicking granular points of what seems to be a generally good document.
I don’t get it. Maybe I just need more hair on my chest. Or cynicism.
May 7th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Rae,
I realize that it might look like their just picking nits, but you don’t run in the circles I do. There are people in my world who pull the “The Gospel Is At Stake!!” alarm lever so many times the fire department is threatening to take it away.
I agree that Joel and Josh got a little too snarky in their tone, but there’s a real concern behind it. Statements like the T4TG manifesto claim way too many things as “essential” and “centric” to the Gospel. The result is that you end up with a very narrow Gospel (narrower than what I think the Bible gives us) that excludes more and more people.
May 7th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
i agree with mark…not only that, but article three of their ‘confession’ seems to be saying ‘modernity was right.’ this is probably not what it was going for, but i want to know what they define as the ‘historicity of biblical events’ concerning the chronology of the exodus-exile or the different accounts given in kings and chronicles. it just seems that a statement like this is built more on a positivistic view of history then on letting the bible speak for itself and convey what it chooses to convey in different genres.
or maybe i’m just in a bad mood.
May 8th, 2006 at 7:44 am
i’m just glad that we have another para-church super-denominational organization to fix the church.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Did anyone else find Article 1 problematic? “We deny that… any portion of Scripture is marked by… the effects of human sinfulness.”
But I thought Jesus said, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” (Matthew 19:8)
This is just depressing.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Article I is just basically a return to the Chicago Statement, an over-compromization with fundamentalism. These guys should know better.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Mark,
Your reaction to this document causes me to do some wondering. Before I get to the heart of this, I admit my commitment to the idea of TRYING to be objective, even-handed and fair in dealing with ideas and the people who hold them. I realize that none of us is objective, even-handed and fair, that such a view and such being is something only God could hold and be.
Still prefacing, here is a slightly less abstract way of saying this. Speaking for me, but probably also for many others, I want to be treated justly, and NOT be discriminated against by those in power in a given situation. I don’t want to suffer because someone I’m in competition with enjoys the favor of a powerful person/institution.
I strongly hope I won’t be victim of “tribal” loyalties or what I call “stadium logic.” In sports, for example, I reject, and cannot celebrate, incidents when my team gets away with a missed call. If watching a basketball home game and a player on my team fouls and the ref calls it, I don’t join my fellow home fans in booing the call. I think, “Why did our player do something stupid?” If one on my team gets away with a travel, I think, “The ref blew that.” I don’t celebrate getting away with the travel. I want to win, passionately, but fairly. Likewise, I don’t want to lose via negligence or intentional discrimination.
All to say, I think we should work as hard as we can to bracket our loyalties, to treat people as fairly as we can, while knowing that we will ultimately fail to be fair. And my comment on your blog does not afford space for multitudes of qualifications– what is fairness, what about when a foul is smart tactic, what about when it’s tough to decide whether the foul called, or not called, is actually a foul. Yes, yes, all legit concerns and qualifications to this.
But we should TRY, and try hard, to be objective, even-handed, and fair. Whether someone is family, or a good friend, does not matter to me. It is NEVER loyalty to any person, except loyalty to Jesus, who is truth (and grace, and love, etc.) Every other person is relativized in light of Jesus, who alone commands our ultimate loyalty. I.e., if, say, my brother does something stupid or wicked, and you say, “In this instance your brother did something wicked,” I would say, “Yes, you are right.” His being my brother does not change the fact that he did something wicked. If God can see that my brother did something wicked, then why cannot others see the same thing and express it? I actually think it is WRONG to say, “You can’t talk that way about my family.” Really? Why not? While we are fallible, we are seeking to have the mind of Christ, to think His thoughts after Him, and to have accurate perceptions of reality. Loyalty to persons who are not Jesus should not trump our loyalty to Jesus and truth.
I am not claiming that what I believe about this is unassailable truth, so critique away. In the past, however, most conversations I have with my critics are of an abstract nature. These conversations usually, when pressed fully, come down to this: WE want to be treated fairly, but also we want to be able to treat others unfairly when the need arises…in the abstract we’ll be fair but in specific situations we will be loyal to family and friends first, but never like it when we suffer from a powerful person discriminating against us in favor of his/her family and friends.
In short, we want the create space to be inconsistent, always in our interests. That strikes me as a recipe for tribalism. Christianity, I think frees us from this, so that the life of man need not be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
My long preface is now over. Why the long windup? In the hopes that you’ll be patient with this proposition, which is I think you treat critics of your friends (Enns) differently than you do critics of the Together for the Gospel folks and I don’t think it is fair. From reading your blog this past year, I think if you read criticisms of yourself, Enns, or other friends that were written in the same tenor as Joel and Josh’s posts, you would be upset. I am speculating, to be sure, but I have witnessed in your writings significant bite against things and people you dislike, and yet outrage when people you love receive similar bite. “Picking nits” and “a little too snarky” strike me as the perspective of loyalty. I believe (speculatively) that if such language were directed at your or Enns you would characterize it more stridently than “picking nits” and “a little too snarky.”
Why can’t we be even-handed? I love Joel’s writings at BHT, and think him brilliant and funny. But his posts on the T4G statement of faith have crossed what I think is the line of “Charitable Theological Discourse.” He is positively mocking his brothers and while I am sympathetic to the substance of a number of his specific criticisms, I marvel at the lack of love in his tone. Joel is not “a little too snarky,” he is a LOT too snarky and should treat his brothers with whom he disagrees with love and respect. They are images of God, redeemed images at that, and do not merit his ridicule.
Do I live up to all this? Of course not. But I don’t ask you or others to excuse me (or Joel) of ridiculing images of God. I am to repent, make restitution, and ask for forgiveness.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Glenn,
I sincerely thank you for taking the big chunk of time it took to write that out of your very busy schedule. I want to listen very carefully when a brother who only knows me through blogs and email will love me enough to write as you did.
Your words sting, but only because they are so true. How far I have to go in learning to walk in love is so evident! Not too long ago I wrote a post wherein I committed to this blog not being as it is in this post. A friend commented in that post that he was worried I would “stop being real.” Obviously he had nothing to worry about!
You have targeted your arrow well, right at the center of my heart. After reading your comment, I spent some time before the Lord going over what went through my heart and mind over the course of this weekend. Here’s an “outline of my heart” if you will, as I now see it:
A. I started the weekend very excited about a project that I saw as a very positive and constructive effort to bring peace and unity to Christ’s church.
B. A conservative Reformed website (the same one that launched the attacks on Peter Enns) characterized that effort in the worst possible light.
C. The leaders of the project mentioned in “A” asked us not to react by going on the attack against “B” but to continue to be positive and charitable. But the anger against “B” was already smoldering in my heart, looking for an outlet.
D. The BHT commentary on T4TG provided the outlet my sin of hidden anger was looking for.
So much more I want to write to you, Glenn, but I have to go to work now. I’m going to put a small retraction on the original post. Suffice for now to say, thank you Glenn. Yours are the wounds of a true friend.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Mark,
Thank you for your gracious response. I hope to be as gracious when someone brings up what Frank James (RTS-Orlando) calls, “my little inconsistencies.” I usually am not, the Jesus isn’t done with me!
As you probably know, I am aware of the incident you allude to, and I was deeply, deeply saddened when I read it, and…boiling. Sam Logan’s reply to all of us was wonderful and a gift from the Lord. I’m with you in this in all ways– wanting grace and love to permeate our community and the broader Church, and yet needing so much more grace and love myself for my own seemingly infinite sin and sins. Thanks be to God.
May 8th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Thank you for your thoughts Glenn. Though, in one sense, they were specifically for Mark. They are helpful for all of us who ’sit in Mark’s camp’ to chew on and be chewed on by.
With that said, I will try to add several things…
1) I agree that we must avoid ‘impungn(ing) their motives.’ At the same time, it is a different thing to read that document and acknowledge that it is EXPLICITLY intended to draw lines in the sand and mark others as out. Furthermore, reading this document in some sort of context of the discussions and issues that are going on in the American Evangelical (semi-Reformed world, for that’s where 4 of them are coming) world is where I begin to be more disturbed. It is ruling as ‘out’ many people who consider themselves ‘within’ the American-Reformed circle but really want a conversation to go on about several areas. It is ruling them and their conversation topics as ‘out’ without ever engaging. It is ruling one as ‘out’ to even have any questions, “By asking that question you are already denying the Gospel!’-type tone. My concern is especially for pastors who are not as aware of many of the discussions in the Evangelical-Reformed world who will attend such a conference and be, in my opinion, misled; be led to think that those who even sound like the ‘denials’ are ‘liberals;’ they are those with whom you do not need to converse because they are not even willing to ’stand together for the gospel.’ I am being general here for several reasons. Many readers will know the specifics about which I am speaking. For those who do not, or want to discuss this in more detail, please let me know and we can then spend time doing that.
2) Art nailed something else in his comment about posivistic/modernist view of history, etc. Though the document rails against ‘postmodern conceptions…’, are they to be exempted from criticism that their document fits the mold demanded by Modernistic-rationalistic-Western thought and assumptions? Ask about their assumptions. In their ‘truth’ section, what is their conception of truth that they endorse (implicitly)? Why should their Modernistic-Rationalistic-Enlightenment-Western conception of truth as logical-systematic-coherence of propositional statements in a systematic-theological system that is ‘truth’ be accepted? Why is such a modernistic conception of ‘truth’ and how ‘the propositional’ is the ultimate and basic conception of how to understand ‘reality’ to be accepted as ‘the Bible’s’ in the way that this T4TG document assumes and (implicitly) asserts? Again, these are areas of discussion in our context. I do not find it helpful to rule them out ahead of time. We are beyond the point of labeling it as some evil, small movement in the church that needs to be squashed. A massive part of the American-Evangelical world wants this conversation. So, what does T4TG do? It comes up with a ‘Together for the Gospel’ statement that rules all of those people as ‘out’ so that it does not have to actually have that conversation. This, again, is not functional or in principle ’sola scriptura!’
Connected with this, whoever can should read Harvie M. Conn’s article ‘Contextual Theologies: The Problem of Agendas’ (WTJ 52, 1990, p51-63). This is a basic/entry level discussion of several issues that all come into focus in this overall discussion. Rather than go on and flesh this out now, I will wait and see if anyone picks up where I am going with this, or wants to discus it. I will end with a quote from the article though and encourage readers of this blog to ponder it in connection with T4TG: “Are John Taylor’s remarks about Africa true of Asia and North America and the Latin world as well? ‘Christ has been presented as the answer to the questions a white man would ask, the solution to the needs that the Western man would feel, the Saviour of the world of the European world-view, the object of the adoration and prayer of historic Christendom. But if Christ were to appear as the answer to the questions (he means, ‘if the gospel were to be articulated as speaking to…’) that the Africans were asking, what would he look like? If he came into the world of African cosmology to redeem Man as Africans understand him, would he be recognizable to the rest of the Church universal?’…Later in the same year (1982) appeared the Seoul Declaration, sponsored by the Asia Theological Association and bringing together Asia’s evangelical theologians. Again, in even more explicit language, Western Theology, ‘whether liberal or conservative, conservative or progressive,’ was criticized for an agenda obsessed with problems of ‘faith and reason,’ for abstractionism from life. IT was said to have capitulated to the secularistic worldview associated with the Enlightenment…Christians in Asia and Africa are taught to answer questions raised by Greek sophists in the fourth century.”
Why have I brought up issues of contextual theology in connection with T4GT? Because, as Mark mentioned earlier, documents and thought (again, modernist-rationalistic-Western) are used all over (around our world up here at WTS) to beat people over the head who are trying to engage in ‘conversation’ in connection with various issues, often relating to the types of things on which Conn, for example, touches (missions, the church, etc). It is frequently done without ever questioning the assumptions about ‘truth’ and ‘how we construe it,’ etc.
Perhaps some food for discussion about T4TG…
Thank you for your time…
May 8th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Well, I am only twenty-four. I mean, OK, maybe calling it “pure crap” was a bit over the top, but it is theologically sloppy in a way that something attempting to be a quasi-ecumenical “Gospel confession” should not be…and it’s not even very good at what its authors intended it to do.
May 8th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Mark,
I appreciate the nod and I even more appreciate the gentle rebuke to my posts incurred by Glenn’s comments. I will confess that these posts were written with a lot of passion. I am not surprised that calmer souls perceived a lack of love. It’s quite likely for there is probably very little love in me. I offered no positive alternatives to the T4G statement. I only criticized. I think Michael Bird’s post on the T4G and women was far more charitable and even-handed than my broadsides. My posts were not soaked in prayer as they should have been.
It was actually that issue, the T4G’s statement on women (Art XVI) that originally got my ire up. Prior to the two longer posts, I had linked to Michael’s post and made a brief comment or two in support of it (also, I tried to dialogue with David Wayne on his post that spoke to this issue; alas, to no avail). My only allusion to that earlier objection was my ongoing snide reference to the brothers as “fellers.”
It isn’t much of a defense, but if you want to know what really hacked me off it was what I perceived in the T4G as a very corrosive idea of what it means to be “together”…for the gospel and for our Saviour. When being “together” for the gospel is defined in such a way as to exclude Bonhoeffer, Lewis, Muggeridge, Chesterton, Father Damien, Mark Noll, Owen Barfield, Mother Teresa, Robert Capon, Kallistos Ware, David Bentley Hart, Stanley Hauerwas, etc. etc. etc., from the brothers who were on that stage in Louisville, well I take that personally. Several of the Christians I just listed were instrumental in introducing the faith to me and shaping it in me. It felt like someone just insulted my mother or family. That the insult came from brothers in Christ and even a fellow PCAer made it even more painful.
The reason I posted my reactions publicly was partly cathartic, partly as a challenge to think about the implications of defining the gospel and the church in this way. Perhaps any benefit that my remarks may have had were washed out by my rhetoric. I do not ask to be excused and fully confess that I am a walking contradiction of passions: angry, broken-hearted, homeless, arrogant, weak.
All I ask for, all I plead for, is that if a group of men are going to join in a cross-denominational effort (and good on them for doing that!) to publicly declare their allegiance to the gospel as they understand it, then for pity’s sake give due consideration to the fact that the Body of Christ is much larger than the bright confessional lines we draw around our particular community (and this is true for the non-Reformed, the Catholics and the Orthodox, too). The complete absence of any notion of the invisible church that might also be “together for the gospel” with us Reformed types must be addressed. I realize that my cynical take on this is probably uncharitable, but I do believe the blatant anti-catholic bias in coopting the term ‘together’ away from the ECT is a politically-motivated tactic. I would encourage the brothers to reconsider their approach.
Consider, instead, the approach taken by the Touchstone contributors in their conference Reclaiming the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue. This is an excellent example of representatives from different traditions, steadfastly arguing for and maintaining the bright lines of their confessional distinctiveness, who, nevertheless, are talking to and with each other around the essentials of the faith, the “Great Tradition,” or mere Christianity. Of course, it’s arrogant of me to even propose that the T4G guys do what I want and follow this other model of being “together for the gospel.” But that’s what I would offer as a constructive, hopeful alternative. I wish at least the presbyterians involved with T4G would consider following in the footsteps of fellow Reformed theologian Harold O. J. Brown (who did participate in the above “ecumenical” conference). For that matter, maybe the Baptists in T4G would find it rewarding, too.
May 8th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Mark thanks for replying to my blog on the Ref21 thing. I don’t mean to be difficulty here but I wonder if part of the problem is that some people don’t seem to see a difference between ‘launching an attack’ and scholarly debate. The church may not need the latter [unless we are fighting for the truth which we are supposed to do] but it sure needs the former. There is a ’scholarly debate’ going on about the Enns book. We should rejoice in that as we all seek for truth.
I also reiterate my point that we don’t seem to read irony and satire well in our culture. Granted I am not on the receiving end of some of the Ref21 humor but still, lets try and laugh a little more at ourselves and each other. Humor is a good thing after all.
May 8th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
I have to agree with those that say the BHT went too far with its T4G rantings, even though I feel inclined to agree with their underpinning arguments. The statement is so shoddy that it isn’t worth letting your anger take over when disecting it. When the truth is on your side you have no reason to feel anxiety.
May 8th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Joel (and indirectly also for Stephen Young),
Thank you for your splendid reply. You are consideralby more gracious than I am when people address me. I react out of silly pride but you responded with grace and thoughtfulness.
If I may be personal for a moment…I am usually reticent when it comes to being critical in the Christian blog realm. At Common Grounds Online we almost always do constructive or positive depictions of living the Christian story. We intentionally leave critique to the self-appointed policemen of orthodoxy, who are sadly numerous and reproductive. Mostly we do this for good theological reasons, but partly it’s because I’m a coward- I don’t want the ire of the powerful policemen of orthodoxy, nor the dismissal of the po-mo savvy. So at CGO we skip the tempests in Reformed teapots again and again.
But I’ll interrupt my usual reticence to say, Joel, I agree with you on most points of your prior critiques of the T4G statement, and all of what you’ve said today in your comment above. I genuinely love John Piper and feel somewhat less passion for and debt of gratitude to Al Mohler and Mark Dever. All three have shaped me a great deal. Ligon Duncan is someone I respect and have learned from and I appreciate his leadership in the PCA.
Like you, I hope one or more of these men will read your criticisms of the T4G statement, or others criticisms, and engage in public, GRACIOUS dialogue. Not debate, but dialogue. I used to love debate, and now I think it almost useless. I suspect Mohler, Dever, Piper and Duncan could have thoughtful replies to your critiques that might, and I hope that they might genuinely consider your criticisms and possibly adjust the statement accordingly. For me, the biggest non-sequitor, which you and others have expressed far better than I can, is the bundling of non-essential doctrinal issues (women, congregational practices, for two examples) with an essential issue such as the Gospel. Either the Gospel is a proxy word for “biblical worldview” and there really are not “non-essentials” because EVERY issue is an essential; or, this statement on the Gospel got freighted with select pet non-essential issues that these guys are deeply invested in (like women in the church).
You have helped me see some of these things and I hope your concerns get noticed and sincerely listened to and then addressed by Mohler, et. al. A real conversation about the articles would be helpful to me and I think to the Church broadly. My fear is that for some participants in the Culture Wars-In-The-Church, the battlelines are drawn and real, genuine listening has stopped. It’s about winning, prevailing, at a time when we may need to think anew about what were fighting for and what it means to “win”.
All to say, while I’m grateful for how the Lord has used Piper, Mohler, Dever, and Duncan in my own life, I think you bring some important questions to their document, and I hope they will take you and your questions seriously. I’m also grateful to you for illuminating specific problems with the document. Thank you for honoring me and other readers with your time and thoughtful interaction.
May 8th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Thanks again to all who have commented thus far. I’ve learned from all of you. You are making this blog what I truly hoped it would be (but am myself too often a poor example), and the dialog in this thread is certainly an example of the kind of irenic discussion of sensitive issues that for which I think we all truly yearn.
To [Not Enns] Peter in particular: I hear you brother! We all do need to be able to laugh, especially at ourselves. Part of the problem, though, is the way that sarcasm and lampooning come across on the impersonal web, especially when targeted at brothers and sisters in Christ. Were I sitting across a lunch table from “Tony the Gent/Iwanna Tarenfetherem” I would first of all know for a certainty that it is one of my esteemed professors and not someone hiding behind a pseudonym. Secondly, I would see by the twinkle in his eye that he didn’t really mean literally either that all students only know what their professors have taught them nor that only students know anything and therefore their professors should shut up. (At least, I hope he doesn’t really believe either of those absurd extremes.) With a smile, I would explain to this professor that the object of his ridicule (who happens to be a frequent commentor on this blog, and no one can convince me that those posts were not aimed at this blog) does indeed know more about 2nd Temple Judaisms and the full orb of scholarly debate over NPP than most, if not all, his professors. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who has read more of the relevant books and articles than he, and what is more, remembers even the footnotes!
But that wasn’t the context of his remarks. Instead, they were delivered pseudonymosly on a blog that only talks to itself and without nuance. Thus they came across as purely insulting, and I reacted to them as such.
I don’t know if that professor will ever agree with me on this. But I can say that, though I have yet to take a class with him (and continue to very much look forward to the ones I will take!) he has already taught me…he’s taught me how not to address Christian brothers and sisters on the Internet. I hope I’ve learned that lesson well.
May 8th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
I guess “Tony the Gent/Iwanna Tarenfetherem†is allowed to use “you just don’t understand what I’m saying,” but only in relationship to the utter ignorance of students who think they know everything and are not willing to learn. Obviously, if the students were as brilliant as “Tony the Gent/Iwanna Tarenfetherem†then we would understand Carson, Helm, and the anti-NPP arguments and repent of our unforgivable idiocy while singing unaccompanied psalms.
And for some reason I was under the assumption that the Reformation sought to rid the church of an ecclesiastical heirarchy of knowledge and put Scripture into the hands of the people.
I must have missed the meeting where we decided to bring the heirarchy of knowledge back.
I’ll have to go back and read the minutes.
May 8th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Art, the meeting you missed was a pretty recent meeting of the General Assembly of the PCA. There was no motion to reinstate any sort of “hierarchy of knowledge” as you put it. There were, however, some minor provisos made within the Westminster Confession.
Chapter 31, Article 3 of the revised WCF reads as follows:
“All synods or councils, since the apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err, with the exception of this one; and many others have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith, or practice as this council is; but to be cast aside without further ado as beyond the pale of Christian orthodoxy.”
May 9th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Mark
I am curious why you would think that Trueman’s comments were directed at Stephen (I am assuming that is who you are referring to…). I think he was just making general comments with his typical tongue-in-cheek humor.
I agree w/you that sometimes he goes too far in his banter and sarcasm, especially since it is done on a public forum such as Ref. 21. But everything he says needs to be kept in context…remember he basically thinks blogs as a whole are a joke and should not be taken seriously. He doesn’t take the whole endeavor seriously, so we shouldn’t really take his comments seriously.
I know I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum as far as the WTS divide goes as most on this blog, but I think that Trueman’s comments can be read jokingly and satirically.
May 9th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Luke…there is so much I could say, but I think wisdom persuades me that I’ve already said all I need to say on the matter.
May 10th, 2006 at 10:05 am
I, for one, am thankful that Iwanna posted the following retraction:
“She withdraws the implication that students actually learn from and are influenced by their professors. She now accepts that students attend seminaries already knowing what they believe, and that it is their task to teach the professors, not vice versa.”
I think we all know that most seminarians these days attend seminaries “knowing” that 2nd Temple Judaism was a sort of merit-seeking proto-16th-century-Roman-Catholicism, that “the Reformed tradition” is beyond theological critique, that the Bible is “historically accurate” at every point in the most positivistic sense of the word and that the apostles were paragons of the most rigorous of grammatical-historical exegesis and, by George, they’ll see to it that any professor who says otherwise hears about it! Thanks Iwanna for pointing that out. I am certain that that is what Iwanna was getting at. But I suppose I might be mistaken….
Although I would love to write more, alas, I must go. I have a busy day of tacitly denying the Creator/creature distinction ahead of me. It is quite taxing trying to be consistently inconsistent in maintaining my anti-supernaturalistic presuppositions day in and day out.
May 10th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Dear Davey,
I hope you had a good breakfast to start that busy day!
Mom
May 10th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
*sung to the tune of God Bless the USA*
I’m proud to be a seminarian
Where I accept what’s said to me,
And I won’t forget the men who wrote
The confession for me
And I’ll gladly stand up
Next to them
And defend it still today.
Cause there ain’t no doubt they had it right,
God bless the P.C.A!!
May 10th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
“Cause there ain’t no doubt they had it right,
God bless the P.C.A!!”
That’s a little over the top. What percentage of PCA presbytery examinees have you ever seen who have no exceptions to the Standards (namely, the WLC on the 2nd and 4th commandments)?
May 10th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Art,
Your tune reminds me of another heretical musing from sibboleth.blogspot.com a while back:
Paperback Pope
Got my paperback pope
Got my little yellow paperback pope
When you say yes and I say nope
We check the little yellow paperback pope
One day we got in a fight
(little yellow paperback pope)
Who is wrong and who is right?
We check the little yellow paperback pope…
Ah hah…
Got my paperback pope
Got my little yellow paperback pope
When you say yes and I say nope
We check the little yellow paperback pope
He recommended it to the tune of ‘ooh, eeh, ooh, ahh ahh, etc’ This was meant to be the introduction song to the little yellow WTS-Standards that well all keep very handy in the PCA/OPC…
http://sibboleth.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_sibboleth_archive.html
You evil people…coming up with such songs…
May 10th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Hey,
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.
May 10th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
it’s funny, i find myself going back and forth inthese discussions and not happy with the camps that are hastily being set up. i know myself well enough to know that i am a contrarian and have still not quite figured out how to cough up the pill of good old American frontiersmanship and individualism i swallowed at the wee age of 5 as i watched countless hours of PBS. all of that is to say that i appreciate the desire of those who want to rigidly maintain confessional orthodoxy in our denomination. i am with them in being very sceptical of the ‘emergent church’ which for all of its rhetoric of community has often left out the community of the martyrs, the theologians in our tradition and certainly any saint who smells of modernism. to the extent that the old is shoved away for the new in a forging of relevant christianity i am with daryl hart a crummudgen. or at least wary of our fascination with what is ’so hot’ right now. i grew up in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches where the temptation to run to “what the Spirit is doing now” was real and in the end very painful.
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.
May 10th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
stephen rippon—it was supposed to be over the top.
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?
May 10th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
art,
thanks for asking. i only meant to distance myself from urges to be relevant in the sense that the next two sentences i wrote explained. i think sometimes we worship at the cult of new. we americans are pioneers and fadish. this can be a liability as the fundamentalist modernist controversy has taught me. if my comment weren’t already too long and poorly written i might have said that those debates carried on in the Presbyterian church in the early 20th centuray have a lot to teach us on both sides. the ‘fundamentalists’ often lived up to the caricature of the angry country bumpkin and rarely seemed to communicate or perhaps apprehend themselves what was really at stake in the move towrd modern religion. we are only now beginning to question the assumptions of modernity in a penetrating way that goes beyond shouting matches. the liberal rhetoric was likewise filled with claims that the conservatives didn’t really understand what they were saying or that they were really orthodox or that their vows were more in the spirit than the letter of the confession. they had tried to argue about what wcf meant concerning Scripture and were pretty much bested by Warfield (cf. Briggs’ and Warfield’s journal exchanges for a fascinating argument). I guess I mean that the liberal rhetoric of newness and relevancy has an erie echo in our discussions today. i think they made a mistake to go with the new uncritically. sometimes relevancy is another word for accommodation and that is what even us who see needs for growth need to be wary of.
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.
May 10th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Jed,
Much of what you have said resonates with me as well. However, I can’t help but feel like there is much in the storehouse that, whether brought out or not, is often ignored by “conservatives.” For instance, Calvin’s handling of Genesis 1, telling folks that if they want astronomical data, they should look elsewhere is often ignored. Nor have I yet seen a Van Tillian to take note of Calvin’s heavy reliance upon Cicero’s writings. So also is much of the nuance given in Warfield’s and Hodge’s articulations of the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy (see Moises Silva’s article “Old Princeton, Westminster and Inerrancy” in Conn’s Inerrancy and Hermeneutic). Herman Ridderbos’ little book, Studies in Scripture and it’s Authority, which says much of the same things as Enns’ inspiration and incarnation is entirely ignored. (for some quotations see my examples here.
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
May 10th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
David…
Raca!!!
May 10th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
david,
as far as i can tell, i wouldn’t disagree with anything you’ve said here. i think you said better than me the way i think about ‘the tradition.’ the more i read calvin the more i see that is “unaccommodated” as Muller puts it, especially on the goodness of creation. evangelicals can be as bad as barth on this. we leave alot of calvin, especially on the sacraments out of our theology. i think some of the confusion in my comments is that i was lumping problems with emerging church stuff, NPP and FV, three different debates really.
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.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I think that abandoning the use of sarcasm is tantamount to abandoning our Reformed tradition. Sarcasm is essential to meaningful theological discourse!
May 13th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Mark, fyi, my latest post on this issue.
May 13th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
Joel, thanks. That was truly wonderful and well-put. You and I, it sounds like, have been through very similar struggles recently, and the P&PT signing is probably just the kind of public accountability we neeeded to undertake.