From: Mark Horne
Subject: Interesting take on my essay at paulperspective.com
Our dear friend at Grace (wouldn’t this be an unpleasant website if the pastor wasn’t so full of grace?) links my essay on the necessity of new obedience:
hornes.org/theologia/content/mark_horne/necessity_of_new_obedience.htm
Then, apparently afraid the heresy might escape notice, he quotes from my conclusion:
“Any attempt to make some apparent level of sanctification the condition for salvation is hostile to the Gospel. Indeed, **claiming that such a level is merely the “fruit of faith is no less legalistic and dangerous.** Matthew 18 gives us the process by which a professing believer may be considered an unbeliever, and that same chapter strongly warns against judging people or cutting them off from hope simply because of repeated sinning. The question is not how much someone obeys God but if they trust God. That trust, operating within a revealed structure of promise and warning, will be visible to oneself, to others, and to God.” (emphasis added — ed.)
If this is a smoking gun, then I don’t understand this man at all!
BTW, in the essay I state quite strongly that apostates never had true faith. . . .
Mark
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 10:49:52 -0700
From: “Tim Gallant”
Subject: Re: Interesting take on my essay at paulperspective.com
Heh. Well, they linked my article on the two natures of Christ. Seems like a strange choice to me. Here’s the paragraph they quote:
“Because Christ’s divine nature is never divided nor separated from the human nature, the fact that the divine is infinite and everywhere does not threaten our accessibility to the human nature, which is finite and spatially limited. When Christ acts for us in self-giving in the Supper, He is not merely giving us His Spirit. He is giving us Himself — His Spirit, His body, His blood. Chalcedon demands that He be at once wholly present, and yet not physically present. That is the mystery of the Incarnation, not the object of mere rational deduction.”
I dunno. Is the offense the doctrine of true presence?
Very weird.
tim
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 18:09:47 -0000
From: “garver”
Subject: Re: Interesting take on my essay at paulperspective.com
Mark Horne wrote:
Our dear friend at Grace (wouldn’t this be an unpleasant website if the pastor wasn’t so full of grace?) links my essay on the necessity of new obedience:
Of the excerpts he quoted from me, I thought all of them were pretty innocuous. The only things that might be red flags to someone are
[a] the quote from “Baptism: Reformed and Catholic,” which is probably way too ecumenical for some folks’ tastes (of course, nevermind that it was a presentation to a largely Roman Catholic audience, more or less summarizing Scotty Old’s book on the Reformed baptismal rite)
[b] the quote from “Ex Opere Operato,” which is taken out of a context where I go right on to say “the phrase is quite misleading to the typical Protestant ear and, in most contexts, probably should be avoided”
joel
