Some of This and More of That

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Rabbi Bret explains why short of theonomy, even transformationalists like the Baylys are guilty of two-kingdom thinking:

. . . the Bayly’s are victims of compartmentalized thinking. They seem to think that one can have a Constitutional objection or financial objection that isn’t at the same time a theological connection. Would someone mind introducing me to an objection, that at its root, isn’t theological?

Let’s take the Constitutional objection. The Baylys admit that they may have a Constitutional objection that is somehow cordoned off from a theological objection. Now, presuming that the Baylys are here suggesting that they object to paying social security tax because they believe that the Constitution doesn’t make provision for it how is that not at the same time a theological objection? Theologically we are to give taxes to whom taxes are due (Romans 13:7) but if the King is asking for taxes that is not his due (i.e. – social security tax) given the law of the land as expressed in the Constitution then suddenly I immediately also have a theological reason to not pay social security taxation. My Constitutional reason not to pay the social security tax flows out of my theological reason not to pay the social security tax. When Government demands taxes (governments never “ask” for taxes) that are not its due then the Government is engaged in theft, which is a violation of the 8th commandment. What began as a Constitutional issue, when traced back to its origin, has found its theological source.

Apparently evangelical arguments against porn are now retreading arguments against alcohol – both alter brain cells. I wonder if there is a cure for testosterone. I know of one – aging.

John Fea thinks the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey is a reason for breaking with evangelicalism. I can think of other reasons but many thanks for additional ammunition.

This review of David VanDrunen’s new book on bio-ethics may be instructive for those who think that two-kingdom theology and natural law are just so much pie-in-the-sky rationalizations of the status quo. Rated BBW (for Baylys Be Warned, with love, of course). Bill Edgar, the reviewer, writes:

In the opening chapter VanDrunen compares several possible Christian attitudes toward participation in public healthcare. He concludes that, although the world’s agendas are often different, even at loggerheads with the biblical approach, Christians need to be active in healthcare, if only because we are called to defend God’s justice in a hostile environment. More positively, as VanDrunen articulately demonstrates, cultural activities are still enjoined, alongside the duty to proclaim the gospel.

And for those old enough to remember “2001: A Space Odyssey,” this graphic on the creation of the Space Station may bring back bad memories, not to mention Chicken Little-like fears about what happens when this mass of gadgets falls out of its orbit.

Forensic Friday: Justification and Assurance

Published on by D. G. HartLeave a comment

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:1)

On this verse Calvin writes:

Here indeed is the chief hinge on which faith turns: that we do not regard the promises of mercy that God offers as true only outside ourselves, but not at all in us; rather that we make them ours by inwardly embracing them. Hence, at last is born that confidence which Paul elsewhere calls “peace” [Rom. 5:1], unless someone may prefer to derive peace from it. Now it is an assurance that renders the conscience calm and peaceful before God’s judgment. Without it the conscience must be harried by disturbed alarm, and almost torn to pieces; unless perhaps, forgetting God and self, for the moment sleeps. And truly for the moment, for it does not long enjoy that miserable forgetfulness without the memory of divine judgment repeatedly coming back and very violently rending it. Briefly, he alone is truly a believer who, convinced by a firm conviction that God is a kindly and well-disposed Father toward him, promises himself all things on the basis of his generosity; who, relying upon the promises of divine benevolence toward him, lays hold on an undoubted expectation of salvation . . . . the apostle does not consider the eyes of our minds well illumined, except as we discern what the hope of the eternal inheritance is to which we have been called [Eph. 1:18]. And everywhere he so teaches as to intimate that we cannot otherwise well comprehend the goodness of God unless we gather from it the fruit of great assurance. (Institutes, 3.2.16)

Why the PCA Needs the Spirituality of the Church

Published on by D. G. Hart69 Comments

Regular readers of Oldlife know about the imbroglio between the Brothers Bayly and those who hold two-kingdoms and the spirituality of the church. The major objection apparently is that these doctrines won’t let the church do what activists on certain moral issues want the church to do in the public square (you know, bad ju ju versus do do). In which case, the spirituality of the church is offensive because it restrains the spiritual and moral dynamic necessary for fighting the culture wars over sex and its illegitimate consequences.

But the Baylys are not alone in wanting the church to be a culture-shaping institution. Tim Keller has recently written (thanks to oldlife reader Zeke Zekowski for the link) at his blog about the need for the church to be engaged in culture making. He writes:

Most of the young evangelicals interested in integrating their faith with film-making, journalism, corporate finance, etc, are getting their support and mentoring from informal networks or para-church groups. Michael Lindsay’s book Faith in the Halls of Power shows that many Christians in places of influence in the culture are alienated from the church, because they get, at best, no church support for living their faith out in the public spheres, and, at worst, opposition.

(A minor quibble here is that I’m not sure Lindsay shows any such thing in a work of sociology that shakes the pom-poms for evangelicals rising in elite sectors without the slightest sense of ambivalence about the theology of glory deeply embedded in [and should be haunting] the evangelical quest for greatness.)

A major kvetch is this: why do Christians pursuing communications and the arts need the church to have their hand held more than plumbers, bakers, farmers, Home Depot check-out clerks, and subway train engineers? How much does the church support the work of the average Mary or Joe? And do these modest workers complain about the church not affirming them? One would think that the perks that come with putting your name on a piece of art or a newspaper column might make up for the lack of gratification that comes with changing the filters in the boiler room of the twelve-floor apartment building.

Keller continues:

At the theological level, the church needs to gain more consensus on how the church and Christian faith relate to culture. There is still a lot of conflict between those who want to disciple Christians for public life, and those who think all “engagement of culture” ultimately leads to compromise and distraction from the preaching of the gospel. What makes this debate difficult is that both sides make good points and have good arguments.

I remain baffled why cultural engagement is a pressing need for the church. I would think it pretty important to shepherd members of Christ’s body in the notion that they are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, whose identity in Christ far transcends the work they do no matter how creative or dull. The church, it seems, has plenty of work to do to confirm Christians in the truth that even when they cease being culture makers or low-level grunts, they are still priests and citizens of a heavenly kingdom with all the affirmation that comes with belonging to Christ, in body and soul, in life and in death. Instead of taking on the task writing a confession for cultural engagement or policy prescription, better is the work of catechizing the faithful in the truths of God, man, sin, salvation, and the church. Those teachings are more important and lasting, even if they do not produce great art or Christian manuals of plumbing.

But without such a consensus on the spirituality of the church and the Christian’s otherworldly identity, communions like the PCA are in danger of becoming balkanized into either the arts-and-culture congregations, or the culture-war churches. Not only are the arts and the politics of nation-states not taught in the PCA’s confessional standards, but very difficult is the task of finding a “thus, sayeth the Lord” for such cultural ambitions.

So irony of ironies, the Baylys and Keller are on the same page in rejecting the spirituality of the church for the culturality of the church. And in so conceiving the church, pastors in the same communion end up driving each other bonkers. Keller doesn’t want the Baylys’ crusading activism and the Baylys don’t want Keller’s urban-chic programming. Wouldn’t the spirituality of the church put an end to these squabbles and make the PCA even more effective than it apparently already is?

Postscript: a good question related to this post is why the OPC does not appear to suffer from the culturality of the church, at least not in the same degree. Maybe it is because the OPC is so small we have enough sense not to beat our breasts about being change agents in the culture. We have enough trouble paying the bills of our standing committees, presbytery committees, and struggling congregations to take on the planet’s policies and art. But it could also be that the spirituality of the church that Machen taught the first generation of the OPC, leavened with the potent supplement of amillennialism taught by Vos, Murray, and Kline, has made Orthodox Presbyterians less impressed with the good, but ultimately fading, culture of this world.

Where's Waldo Wednesday

Published on by D. G. Hart85 Comments

The Priority

Although no fundamental issue of theology, or specifically of soteriology, would be at stake if regeneration were giving the priority in the application of redemption, yet the evidence shows that the call occupies this position. If we fail to accord to it the place which the exegetical considerations demand, we miss a great deal of the emphasis of Scripture and are also liable to overlook what belongs to its specific and distinguishing character. The key passage evincing its priority is Romans 8: 29, 30. There are so many indication of order in this passage that we are compelled to regard the apostle as enunciating the order: calling, justification, glorification, in verse 30, and also establishing calling as the act of grace directly joined to predestination, and as that which in the realm of application brings the latter to expression. Other passages, particularly those in the Pauline epistles, create the strongest presumption in favour of the conclusion which Romans 8:29, 30 would require (cf. 1 Cor. 1:9; Gal. 1:15; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Peter. 2:9; 5:10; 2 Pet. 1:10). (John Murray on “The Call” in Collected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 161-62.)

For Doug Wilson Apparently Being Reformed Means Evangelicalism That Is Effective

Published on by D. G. Hart195 Comments


Doug Wilson joins the Bayly Bros in heaping scorn on our good friend Scott Clark and the case for recovering the Reformed confessions. To Doug’s credit, he avoids the vituperative edge that characterizes the Baylys’ outbursts.

What unites Wilson and the Brothers Bayly in their criticism of Clark, apart from disdain for Meredith Kline, mind you, one of the true geniuses of twentieth-century Reformed Christianity, is nostalgia for Geneva. Of course, this is not the Geneva that sent Castellio packing or Servetus to the flames – well, it is, but most contemporary pining for Geneva manages to overlook the downside of Constantianism even when practiced by Reformer pastors.

Wilson is writing in response to a piece that Clark did for Table Talk on what evangelicals should expect from a Reformed church. Clark tries to cushion the blow that might come from the doctrinal, polity, and liturgical trappings that disorient the average born-again Christian. When Clark explains that “confessional churches are isolated from both the old liberal mainline and the revivalist traditions” and so offer an alternative to liberal and evangelical Protestantism, Wilson goes off.

First, Wilson laments Clark’s isolationism. Not only are Reformed confessionalists separated from evangelicals and liberals, but also “from the cultural potency of Reformed theology and piety.” This is lamentable because for Wilson, the Reformed theology that he has read and studied “built a great civilization.” In contrast, Clark’s brand of Reformed theology, that of “the truncated brethren,” “would have trouble building a taco stand.”

Wilson also takes exception to Clark’s claim that confessional churches today approximate the churches of the sixteenth century more than other Protestant congregations. For Wilson, this is patently untrue because the sixteenth-century Reformed churches were actually Reformed cities – that is, they were more than merely religious institutions. They were civil polities where supposedly Calvinism shaped all of Geneva’s or Strasbourg’s or Edinburgh’s life (tell that to the magistrates who stuck their neck out against the Holy Roman Empire and hired the Reformed pastors). This suggests that Wilson regards Reformed Protestantism as a way of taking names and kicking butt.

Furthermore, when Clark claims that evangelicals coming to Reformed churches will need time to acclimate to the new spiritual environment, Wilson retorts that Clark has the picture “exactly backwards” because Clark’s otherworldly version of the Reformed faith turns out to be warmed over evangelicalism (read: pietism). According to Wilson:

As an evangelical, and the son of an evangelical, allow me to give my testimony. I was part of the exodus from pop evangelicalism (not historic evangelicalism). I was sick of the cultural irrelevance and impotence of “believe in Jesus, go to Heaven when you die.” I was sick of a pietism that couldn’t find its way out of the prayer closet. I wanted to stop confessing that Jesus was Lord of an invisible seventeenth dimension somewhere. Why not here? Why not now? It was a long story, but the trail to historic evangelicalism, God-honoring worship, and a culturally potent and world transforming faith led me straight to the Reformed faith — the same faith that John Calvin and his successors confessed. Calvin preached to milkmaids and Calvin wrote letters to princes. Calvin drafted catechisms, and he drafted ordinances for the city council. Calvin thought that the idea of a civil society without enforcement of the first table of the law was “preposterous.” Calvin was a loyal son of Christendom, as am I.

It is remarkable that Wilson would seemingly dismiss the idea of people going to heaven, unless he thinks that this world is more than a foretaste but an actual embodiment of the world to come. I mean, people who milk cows to the glory of God still die, at which point the realities of the after life become fairly pressing compared to a Reformed way to pasteurize milk.

Also odd is Wilson’s sleight of hand regarding “pop” and “historic” evangelicalism. My own testimony (both from experience and study) instructs me that appeals to historic evangelicalism generally depend less on historical realities and more to the point the appellant is trying to make. Does Wilson really mean to suggest that Clark has more in common with Joel Osteen than Carl Henry? Let me testify again and say that I’ve spent time with Clark and know that his locks cannot compete with Osteen’s.

But the really arresting aspect of Wilson’s critique of Clark is the idea that cultural relevance and effective change of this world is what characterizes Reformed Christianity. I get it that post-Niebuhr and post-Kuyper Wilson’s brand of transformationalism is par for the course. But what is shocking is the conceit that Reformed are more effective than evangelicals in changing things.

The history of Protestantism in the United States shows that the groups that were most influential in creating the Protestant establishment and its many institutions, along with a civil religion that made the greatest nation on God’s green earth unfriendly to Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and other forms of infidelity, were those evangelicals like Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher, or the ecumenical and liberal Protestants like Josiah Strong and Reinhold Niebuhr. Funny how Calvinism did not characterize those influential voices.

The reason for evangelicalism’s can-do body (as well as spirit) has to do with the inherently activistic and this-worldly faith of born-again Protestantism. Here I am reminded of Mark Noll’s response to a paper by Nick Wolsterstorff about the need for evangelicals to become more engaged in cultural and social matters. Noll said that telling evangelicals to be more active was like pointing an addict to dope.

So Doug Wilson may be the real evangelical. He may be more culturally relevant and effective than Clark and other two-kingdom proponents, though I hear that even in Moscow, Idaho the work of cultural clean up is not perhaps a model for taking on the rest of the nation, globe, or cosmos. Granted, if Wilson can rid the United States of automobiles, Walmart, and illegal drugs, I won’t complain. But I would ask that he put church reform higher on his list. All the infidelity among churches that claim to be Christian (even some Reformed communions) certainly appears to be a matter of greater alarm than getting non-believers to conform outwardly to the manners and customs of Credenda Agenda ‘s readers.

Which means that if Wilson think’s Reformed confessionalism’s dualism is bad ju ju, his works righteousness is bad do do (is the works righteousness of do doism ever good?).

Forensic Friday: Warfield on Justification

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

Sometimes we are told that Justification by Faith is “out of date.” That would be a pity, if it were true. What it would mean would be that the way of salvation was closed and “no thoroughfare” nailed up over the barriers. There is not justification for sinful men except by faith. The works of a sinful man will, of course, be as sinful as he is, and nothing but condemnation can be built on them. Where can he get works upon which he can found his hope of justification, except from Another? His hope of Justification, remember – that is, of being pronounced righteous by God. Can God pronounce him righteous except on the ground of works that are righteous? Where can a sinful man get works that are righteous? Surely, not from himself; for, is he not a sinner, and all his works as sinful as he can offer to God as righteous. And where will he find such works except in Christ? Or how will he make them his own except by faith in Christ?

Justification by Faith, we see, is not to be set in contradiction to justification by Works. It is set in contradiction only to justification by our Own Works. It is justification by Christ’s Works. The whole question, accordingly, is whether we can hope to be received into God’s favor on the ground of what we do ourselves, or only on the ground of what Christ does for us. If we expect to be received on th e ground of what we do ourselves – that is what is called Justification by Works. If on the ground of what Christ has done for us – that is what is mean by Justification by Faith. Justification by Faith means, that is to say, that we look to Christ and to him alone for salvation, and come to God pleading Christ’s death and righteousness as the ground of our hope to be received into his favor. If Justification by Faith is out of date, that means, then, that salvation by Christ is out of date. There is nothing, in that case, left to us but that each man must just do the best he can do to save himself.

Justification by Faith does not mean, then, salvation by believing things instead of by doing right. It means pleading the merits of Christ before the throne of grace instead of our own merits. It may be doing right to believe things, and doing right is certainly right. The trouble with pleading our own merits before God is not that merits of our own would not be acceptable to God. The trouble is that we haven’t any merits of our own to plead before God. Adam, before his fall, had merits of his own, and because he had merits of his own he was, in his own person acceptable to God. He didn’t need Another to stand between him and God, whose merits he could plead. And, therefore, there was no talk of his being Justified by Faith. But we are not like Adam before the fall; we are sinners and have no merits of our own. It we are to be justified at all, it must be on the ground of the merits of Another, whose merits can be made ours by faith. And that is the reason why God sent his Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life. If we do not believe in him, obviously we must perish. But if we believe in him, we shall not perish but have everlasting life. That is just Justification by Faith. Justification by Faith is nothing other than obtaining everlasting life by believing in Christ. If Justification by Faith is out of date, then salvation through Christ is out of date. And as there is none other name under heaven, given among men, wherein we must be saved, if salvation through Christ is out of date then is salvation itself out of date. Surely, in a world of sinful men, needing salvation, this would b a great pity. (“Justification by Faith, Out of Date,” Selected Shorter Writings, I, pp. 281-282)

What is interesting to notice, at least for this forensically obsessive compulsive oldlifer, is the way Warfield identifies salvation with justification as in: “If Justification by Faith is out of date, that means, then, that salvation by Christ is out of date. There is nothing, in that case, left to us but that each man must just do the best he can do to save himself.”

Warfield may be in error, and may need correction by the likes of — insert the name of your favorite union theologian here. But he does exemplify the way some of us old timers have regarded the centrality of justification to the Reformed faith. It also accounts for why some become a tad concerned to hear that without union in the picture to supplement justification we have an impoverished understanding of salvation. Warfield explains well that justification is at the heart of the gospel.

Calvin on Lloyd-Jones

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

Writing on Luke 12:14, Calvin argues:

Secondly, our Lord intended to draw a distinction between the political kingdoms of this world and the government of his Church; for he had been appointed by the Father to be a Teacher, who should divide asunder, by the sword of the word, the thoughts and feelings, and penetrate into the souls of men, (Hebrews 4:12,) but was not a magistrate to divide inheritances This condemns the robbery of the Pope and his clergy, who, while they give themselves out to be pastors of the Church, have dared to usurp an earthly and secular jurisdiction, which is inconsistent with their office; for what is in itself lawful may be improper in certain persons.

David Bayly agrees:

And of course, to all this I say, “Amen and amen.” Yes, absolutely. I have no quarrel with such a two-kingdom approach, in fact I emphatically agree with Calvin that is it wicked for pastors of the Church “to usurp an earthly and secular jurisdiction.”

So I guess if Calvin was 2k and Bayly agrees with Calvin, then Calvin must have praised Lloyd-Jones and Jonathan Edwards. Ba dop bop.

Where's Waldo Wednesday

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments


As part of oldlife’s continuing effort to assist in clarifying the Reformed faith and overcoming unnecessary disagreements, we will be featuring a number of quotations on the application of redemption from noted Reformed theologians. What drives this series is an effort to understand how the doctrine of union with Christ has or has not functioned in discussions of the ordo salutis and the benefits that believers receive through Christ’s mediatorial work. If we feature quotations where the discussion of union is absent, we are confident that others will see union even where we don’t.

The following comes from B. B. Warfield’s article on sanctification:

The evangelical doctrine of salvation common to the Lutheran and Reformed Churches includes the following points: 1) The soul after regeneration continues dependent upon the constant gracious operations of the Holy Spirit, but is through grace, able to co-operate with them. 2) The sanctifying operations of the Spirit are supernatural, and yet effected in connection with and through the instrumentality of means: the means of sanctification being either internal, such as faith and the co-operation of the regenerated will with grace, or external, such as the word of God, sacraments, prayer, Christian fellowship, and the providential discipline of our heavenly Father. 3) In this process the Spirit gradually completes the work of moral purification commenced in regeneration. The works has two sides: a) the cleansing of the soul from sin and emancipation from its power, and b) the development of the implanted principle of spiritual life and infused habits of grace, until the subject comes to the stature of perfect manhood in Christ. Its effect is spiritually and morally to transform the whole man, intellect, affections, and will, soul, and body. 4) The work proceeds with various degrees of thoroughness during life, but is never consummated in absolute moral perfection until the subject passes into glory. (Selected Shorter Writings – II, pp. 327-28)

Would Jesus Forgive Ken Starr?

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

A little over a month ago I attended an evening of offbeat film where one of the archivists responsible for the program introduced himself as hailing from Raleigh, N.C. He said that he used to say this was the home of Slim Jims (I think) and Jesse Helms. But since the cooking of spicy meat bi-products was going on somewhere else, and since Jesse Helms had died, he could no longer talk that way about his home. At the point where he mentioned Helms’ death, the mostly academic and artsy crowd began to applaud.

Now I know conservatives are regularly guilty of bad taste and the examples of Rush and Glen provide daily reminders to non-conservatives of how mean the Right is supposed to be. But I find it hard to believe that even the vox talk-radioli greeted the news of Edward Kennedy’s death with the same glee evident at this evening of film. Granted, everyone on planet earth is a sinner and so constantly guilty of hypocrisy (which is sort of Paul’s point in Romans 1 and 2, right?). So I shrugged off the incident and despite discomfort with the egregious bad taste stuck around for the movies (plus, I had paid my $7). But I do scratch my head at the liberal talking point that conservatives are meanies when instances like this, not to mention various hosts at MSNBC, seem to balance the scales of meanness between the Right and the Left. If liberals want conservatives to stop being mean, shouldn’t they embody the niceness that supposedly typifies their understanding of a good society?

I was reminded of this incident when reading Randall Balmer’s recent reflections about the appointment of Kenneth Starr as president of Baylor University. I myself think that the Republicans treatment of Bill Clinton during the Lewinski scandal was in the ballpark of Clinton’s own shameful behavior – maybe not at home plate, but still inside the white lines. But liberals don’t forgive and forget anymore than conservatives, hence the helpings of meanness that fill up both the Right’s and the Left’s plates.

Balmer writes:

Starr’s appointment is not surprising because it apparently reflects the right-wing leanings of the regents, if not necessarily the faculty or the students. Starr as special prosecutor, of course, sought to bring down the Clinton administration. (Was it my imagination, or did Starr seem just a tad too interested in the tawdry Monica Lewinsky business?) Starr also has been dean of the notoriously right-wing Pepperdine Law School, and he has been in the forefront of supporters for California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that reversed the legalization of same-sex marriages.

At the announcement of his appointment, Starr sought to play down his past. “Baylor’s pursuit of knowledge,” he intoned, leaning closely to read his notes, “is strengthened by the conviction that truth has its ultimate source in God.”

As a person of faith, I have no quarrel with that statement. But the real question for the faculty and students at Baylor is how the new administration approaches the “pursuit of knowledge” at the university. What if the pursuit of knowledge entails stem-cell research or leads to the conclusion (gasp!) that evolution is the most satisfactory explanation of human origins? What if a member of the religion department or the divinity school faculty notices that Jesus really had little or nothing to say about homosexuality or that Paul’s statement that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female merits a capacious interpretation?

The difficulty for Balmer here is even greater than the one that afflicted my fellow movie watchers. On a minor level, he should know that universities, their trustees, and presidents regularly engage in activities that are inconsistent with the ideals they uphold. Think, for instance, of the welcome that Balmer’s institution, Columbia University, gave to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But an even greater problem is that Balmer identifies with the evangelical left, a group of believers who supposedly point to the kinder and gentler Sermon on the Mount, as opposed to the Right’s harsh Ten Commandments, as the model for Christians getting along. So if Christians are to do as Jesus did, turn the other cheek, and forgive at least seventy times seven, why is Balmer publicly bearing a grudge against Starr? If the love and forgiveness that Jesus taught and practiced is supposed to provide a different model of Christian engagement in public life and discourse, wouldn’t it be good either to let this editorial against Starr go, or extend the right hand of fellowship and thereby embody the sort of ethic that Balmer finds lacking in the Religious Right?

It could be that wherever you get your law, either from Moses or Jesus, it is awfully demanding and so fails to produce the Rodney King-like society for which that liberals and evangelical lefties pine. Or it could be that Balmer is simply regretting that his most recent book has come out with Baylor University Press. At least he can explain that it wasn’t issued on Starr’s watch.

When This and That Comes Home

Published on by D. G. HartLeave a comment


The best college basketball coach in the United States works in Philadelphia and no one knows about him. Congratulations to Herb Magee for winning his 903rd game at Philadelphia University. His closest competitor is Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski with 856 wins. But does Herb get to do ads for American Express? I don’t think so.

Rabbi Bret almost makes up with the Bayly Bros. when he writes the following against 2k (amazing how unifying 2k thinking is):

. . . there are other preachers out there who do raise their voices against R2Kt. Doug Wilson does a fine job revealing its weaknesses. Also, the Bayly Brothers came out with guns blazing against it in the past week. A gentleman named Rev. Ken Pierce also spoke out strongly against it. Now, at least as concerns the Bayly’s and Rev. Pierce they are not as consistent as they might be on the subject given their disavowal of theonomy, theocracy and a bold optimistic eschatology, but still in many respects, they acquitted themselves well in speaking out against R2Kt. I think more and more people are slowly awakening to the danger that R2Kt represents and I fully expect, in the near future, that you’ll hear more Reformed ministers raising their voices against it.

But then Rabbi Bret blows it when he takes on the experimental Calvinism in ways that make the Bayly Bros. wild about the evils of 2k (isn’t this the point of Scott Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession?):

There is a strain in Reformed theology that emphasizes the kind of subjectivism that Alexander warns against. This kind of subjectivism would have us find assurance of faith by examining our faith, or our repentance, or our love for God, or our performance in order to discern whether or not our faith, repentance, love or performance are genuine and not spurious. The problem with this is that when scrupulously honest regenerated people dwell in a concentrated way in examining these realities the more likely they are to conclude that they are unconverted. When we seek to anchor our faith in the quality of our faith, repentance, love, or performance we are sure to be ruined from one of two directions.

If we examine ourselves and find assurance because of the quality of our spiritual virtues we run the danger of being ruined from the sense of a self-satisfaction that may easily give way to self righteousness. We also run the danger of developing a spiritual inertia that does not allow us the capacity to see our real sin since our assurance becomes wrapped up in our ability to convince ourselves of the thorough genuineness of our spiritual virtues.

On the other hand if we examine ourselves and don’t find assurance because of the real lack of quality of our spiritual virtues – thus becoming convinced that our faith, repentance, love, works, etc. are spurious – we run the danger of concluding that God’s genuine work in our lives is false. When sinners such as ourselves turn our gaze inward in order to examine our spiritual virtues what else should we expect to find except the reality that our spiritual virtues are not so virtuous?

Here are a couple of thoughts for the front porch republican heart that beats within the average Old Lifer.

Thanks to John Fea I have new reasons for thinking myself superior. It’s because Ann and I live with Cordelia and Isabelle.