After hearing from Pastor Sauls on the valuable contributions from those who disagree, we read Mark Jones who has his own objections to the narrow road. Maybe Pastor Sauls qualifies as one of Jones’ Reformed irenics since the former is not beholden to Reformed orthodoxy. But I suspect Sauls would fall short because he doesn’t know enough historical theology. Those who do know the breadth of the Reformed tradition as Jones does are different from and less appealing than the Truly Reformed who read the Reformed confessions in a wooden manner (unlike someone trained in historical theology):
Among this group, I sometimes worry that their zeal for Confessional fidelity – a noble zeal, in and of itself – can sometimes reflect an overly restricted reading of the diversity of the Reformed tradition and our Reformed confessional history. They can read our confessions in a somewhat a-historical manner. Thus they tend to draw the lines of orthodoxy quite narrowly, excluding views from the tradition that have quite a bit of historical precedent. We must admit: our tradition has lots of diversity. Lots. And this diversity is present in the way our Confessions were formed, if one reads them carefully (e.g., the nature of Adam’s reward is ambiguous).
A recognition of diversity leads to an awareness of how narrow our conservative Presbyterian world in North America is:
When we consider the Christian world, and just how broad it is, it doesn’t make much sense for us in the Reformed Confessional tradition to be too narrow. We are, after all, a tiny minority. We should, as far as we are able, and without compromising our confessional heritage, embrace or respect other Christian traditions, viewpoints, and values. It is actually a firm confidence in our Reformed Confessional heritage that allows us to do this.
If I may be allowed a minute at the historical microphone, let me assert that historical theology is not church history. And church history teaches a couple of lessons that Dr. Jones’ historical theology apparently leaves out.
First, a confession is not a work of historical theology. It is a legal standard for a Christian communion. Does it mean that it doesn’t have a history or that context isn’t important for understanding the words and arguments of the Confession? No. But it does mean that a confession for a specific denomination functions in a very different way from a theologian highly regarded by people in a theological tradition. The Confession of Faith is a secondary standard for the PCA and the OPC. John Calvin and John Owen are not such legal standards. And the reason churches have confessions is very different from the aim that animates historical theologians; churches need criteria and consensus for ordination and discipline while historical theologians, like Dr. Jones at least, can marvel at the diversity.
Second, church history also teaches why some Presbyterian communions are narrow. The reason is that some Presbyterian communions became broad — as in Leffert Loetscher’s Broadening Church, the history of the PCUSA. In addition, one of the reasons mainline Presbyterians celebrated breadth owed in part to the discovery of Christians in other parts of the world and a concomitant recognition of how seemingly foreign the West’s creeds and confessions were to non-Westerners.
Dr. Jones may not be celebrating breadth and diversity in the same way, but when he lectures us about history, I wish he would take more history into account.
Old Life 
Infallible or impotent?
“There is a popular Italian saying around the Vatican that roughly translates, “The pope comes and goes. The cardinals stay.” Budgetary reform has been the stated goal of every pope going back at least four decades. It has, so far, stymied every one of them.”
http://nypost.com/2015/11/15/corruption-at-the-vatican-leaks-the-bomba-sexy-at-the-center-of-it-all/
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Ladies’ mayonnaise,
Imagine if Western Christianity had merely chosen Jerusalem as its headquarters.
Imagine choosing the city whose government killed our Lord.
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Sorry, what promise did I break? Or were you talking to someone else? I do all my online jabber by phone now, since I spilled water on my laptop (my poor, suffering husband), so it comes across as very jumbled and hasty, but not the charming, pointed way Sean can pull that off. He has the best comments.
I understand Roman Catholicism. I read her writers and philosophers. I have worked for both the successor to Karl Keating and the about.com writer. I am a fan of Ratzinger. In high school I babysat for a huge extended RC family clan heavily involved in a local chapter of People of Praise (charismatic laity), my home school group had a large percentage of Latin Mass attendants who have their children memorize the Baltimore. Almost all go to daily mass and weekly confession. A very good friend was just married and planned her wedding around being able to be at the annual (?) audience for newly married during the honeymoon. I like Simcha Fisher and all we confessional Lutheranhomeschool mamas steal from Catholic Icing, Feast and Feria, Catholic Cuisine, Fisheaters,etc and If saying Brideshead Revisited is my favorite novel doesn’t give me cred, I don’t know what else will.
Arthur Just’s “Heaven on Earth” (after you’re done with The Eternal Woman you can read that one, too) is profoundly above Hahn’s “Lamb’s Supper.” It’s just more Catholic, which is hard for a Roman Catholic to hear someone say (and you would probably disagree with me, but do read it). I became Lutheran because or confessions are more Catholic. (And now maybe you understand more why I say “Romanist,” but not necessary pejoratively, just “of the Roman confession”)
Time for this female to go back to lurking! Blessed end of the church year to you, Mermaid! The current events certainly remind us of all creation groaning toward the Parasouia. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Our family is praying the Litany each day this winter.
Click to access TheLitany-pamphlet.pdf
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Consistency is very narrow. And one man’s heresy is another man’s diversity.
Mark Jones—-First, I wonder if the reader could be forgiven for thinking that Crisp views Arminians as a branch within the Reformed tradition, as many Remonstrants today wish to argue. Crisp states on page 27 that “most Reformed theologians (though perhaps not all) are said to affirm monergism.” In the footnote he then claims: “Reformed theologians are typically theological determinists, but some have advocated theological libertarianism, like the Arminians.”
Mark Jones—Does Crisp think the Arminians are, in some sense, Reformed? Or are those Reformed who have advocated theological libertarianism doing so in the same way the Arminians did? I am also left wondering who these Reformed theologians are who were not monergists? I can’t think of anyone.
Mark Jones—Crisp states on the next page (28) that it is not clear to him that “Arminians are synergists.” He also raises the question over how the human will may “contribute” to salvation. So if there are (hypothetically?) Reformed theologians who are not monergistic, but it is also not clear to Crisp that Arminians are synergistic, then what categories does he have in mind to sort this problem out? Are Arminians monergistic but some Reformed are not?
Mark Jones–As we study the historical context of debate between the Arminians (Remonstrants) and Reformed, we note that they had strong disagreements on almost every major point of theology (e.g., providence, Christology, trinity, covenant, doctrine of God), especially justification. For the Arminians, it is the (human!) act of faith that is (by grace!) counted as (evangelical) righteousness, as if it were the complete fulfillment of the whole law. It is a genuine human act, coming forth from the liberum arbitrium. So that is synergistic, in my mind.
Mark Jones—In addition, we should also add that Arminius’s vigorous commitment to scientia media meant that God responded to hypothetical human willing prior to God’s providential concursus…. Historically speaking, the term Reformed has reference to a particular confessional tradition. Arminius, for example, came into conflict with this confessional tradition. He tried to claim he held to the Heidelberg Catechism and Belgic Confession, but this was deceptive on Arminius’s part. I wonder if Crisp thinks that Karl Barth is part of this Reformed confessional tradition, as well?
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/05/reflections-on-deviant-calvini.php
Mark Jones on “when calling someone a heretic”—–” I would argue that Pelagianism is a heresy, but Arminianism is not. Pelagianism overthrows several fundamental articles. I would argue that Arminianism is a serious error, but it is not a heresy…..you should be very careful, indeed – when you hurl around the word “moralist”… on matters that do not rise to the level of soul-damning doctrine. ….We do not need to shrink back from lively, vigorous theological debate. Amyraldianism and closed communion and episcopacy are all errors, in my view. But, these errors are not heresies. A wall exists between my brothers who hold to any one of these views, but the wall is not so high that we cannot “shake hands” as brothers.”
mcmark– in the meanwhile, it can never hurt to use the word “antinomian” when talking to your congregation, because in this day and age those in the covenant need to be reminded that sinners who actually practice sin are “antinomian” and it’s very well possible that many in your congregation will not do the works necessary to stay in covenant and attain final justification.
I am reminded of the Ian Murray defense of Wesley—it’s not his fault that he was Arminian because it was the fault of the “truly reformed” Antinomians….
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DG Hart–“When will the critics of 2k acknowledge that the teachings of Calvin or Richard Hooker cannot be applied coherently to our world either, or that 2k looks a whole lot more coherent after the revolutions of the late eighteenth century than do Constantinian politics applied to a mixed body of citizens.”
Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Mystery-Averse Minds
https://oldlife.org/2012/05/consistency-is-the-hobgoblin-of-mystery-averse-minds/
Christianity is not consistent with persons who are liberal about what the gospel is, but that does not mean that Christians who are anti-war are liberal or inconsistent or even “neutral”
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So excluding “hypothetical universalism” from the OPC would be too narrow? If it used to be “Reformed”, then maybe need to allow it in order to remain “catholic” enough?
Waddington—“Dr. Fesko offers a fascinating discussion of hypothetical universalism . It is a fact that there were members present in the assembly who held this view, and the author notes the complexity of the matter and the various views that fall under the label of hypothetical universalism. My concern is not with the details of the discussion. Muller has brought this issue to our attention as well so we are familiar with it. My concern is theological more than historical. As I have already noted, it is a fact that members of the assembly held to a variety of views that can be classified as forms of hypothetical universalism.”
Waddington—However, beyond doing us the favor of reminding us that at the time of the assembly hypothetical universalism was a live option, one gets the sense that there is also at work here a theological agenda. The contemporary view is too narrow perhaps. Church history hopefully involves an increasingly more precise and improved understanding of the Scriptures and theology.
Waddington– In other words, should we try to turn back the clock and broaden our confessional views on this? Maybe so. Maybe not. That is a matter for exegetical, biblical, and systematic theology. Historical theology has done us the service of reminding us that at one point hypothetical universalism, at least in some of its variations, was acceptable. We recognize that there is development in theology and that we need to be historically sensitive to this.
Waddington–Would it be right to judge earlier formulations by later standards? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that if a later development actually is an improvement and refinement and correction to earlier views, we would not want to revert to the earlier formulations. No, in the sense that we will recognize earlier formulations as defective but not necessarily erroneous or heretical.
http://www.opc.org/os.html?article_id=529&cur_iss=Y
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Mark Jones—-I know Boston and his friends did not think the Marrow taught hypothetical universalism. And many scholars try with all their might to avoid the implications of this thought, but I simply cannot see how we can deny that the Marrow teaches hypothetical universalism….Culverwell, whom Fisher quotes in the Marrow in relation to the Fee Offer, held to Hypothetical Universalism (Ussher convinced him).
Mark Jones—-No particularist at that point in Reformed history) would be comfortable with the language used by Fisher. That later particularists in Scotland aren’t uncomfortable with Fisher’s language is a very interesting historical point.
– http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2016/01/the-marrow-part-1.php
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