From: “garver”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
As far as I can tell, the final report never showed up today on the FPC Jackson website.
Nevertheless, this is what I’ve whipped up so far as some kind of (yet unfinished) response:
joelgarver.com/docs/response.htm
I figure I might as well respond publicly now that I’ve been named in the footnotes of the preliminary report.
Besides, I’ve got nothing to lose, since my livelihood is not dependent in any way upon affiliation with the PCA (though if anyone wants me out of the PCA they will have to pry my cold, dead fingers off of my Westminster Confession).
In any case, since whatever I respond will potentially reflect upon a number of you, for good or ill, I don’t plan on making something public without input from you guys.
So any feedback is much appreciated.
joel
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 19:38:19 -0600
From: “James B. Jordan”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
This is no full reply, but I scanned through it. On #13, at least when EYE use the phrase, I mean that it is blasphemous to try to view history “through the lens of the decree” and that it is only possible for creatures to view things covenantally. I’m pretty sure that’s what Shepherd had in mind, and I can hardly see any way to object to it. Which is to say, the 5 points are fine, but they are all in God’s mind, so to speak, and don’t ever connect with what I actually know and understand. They are ultimately all apophatic limiting concepts.
JBJordan
James B. Jordan
Director, Biblical Horizons
Box 1096
Niceville, FL 32578
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 01:45:01 -0000
From: “garver”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
James B. Jordan wrote:
This is no full reply, but I scanned through it. On #13, at least when EYE use the phrase, I mean that it is blasphemous to try to view history “through the lens of the decree” and that it is only possible for creatures to view things covenantally. . .
Cool.
You can probably divine that by the time I got to (13), my energies were pretty well spent, especially after a busy teaching day. I don’t plan on adding any more tonight. I’ll return to it when I’m more refreshed.
joel
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:43:50 -0500
From: Scott Linn
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Greetings,
Nevertheless, this is what I’ve whipped up so far as some kind of (yet unfinished) response:
This is an excellent reply to the MVP. Alas, I’m not smart enough to get in the middle of the discussion, but I can spot a typo.
“need not etermine our exegesis”
Scott Linn
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:24:30 -0600
From: Mark Horne
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
On dealing with #1, you *MIGHT* want to point out the difference between what Wright may or may not believe and what any PCA minister might believe. Is the point here to just have a ordinand clarify the extrinsic basis of our standing before God, or to regard him as beyond the pale simply because he appreciates Wright?
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:27:48 -0600
From: Mark Horne
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Ditto for #2. Who is calling for confessional revision in the PCA? (It is rather typical for those outside a confessional heritage to be more willing to disagree with it. But the sentiments of someone who subscribes to the 3FU should not be thought of as representative. Where is the problem in the PCA?
Mark
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:42:01 -0600
From: Mark Horne
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Joel, regarding #12, I thought the document was directed at “internal” instruments like repentance, etc.
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:47:07 -0600
From: Mark Horne
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Joel, re #16, you might want to end with a work of your wondrous citation magic and name some example of who speaks of “conditionally and sacramentally” etc.
As the document stands now, I am proud of your work and would be completely happy with it as an answer. I do have some more I might want to see said, but I’m not sure it needs to be said (i.e. “What kind of tyrants try to make this sort of vague accusation a matter of judicial process?”) So I’m happy with your document.
Mark
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 23:13:00 -0500
From: pduggan
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
In any case, since whatever I respond will potentially reflect upon a number of you, for good or ill, I don’t plan on making something public without input from you guys.
So are you taking issue with 2 of the things the AAPC statement says?
1) That in baptism, all the blessings and benefits of Christ’s work are give, except final perseverance
There seem to be 2 questions in this one to question: When the AAPC says that the blessings are “given” to all, do they mean that they are truly offered, though not necessarily received by every baptizand. If that is what is intended, why omit final perseverance?
Or if they mean that they are received and experienced by all (can they be given and experienced, but not received?) where does the AAPC intimate that the distinction between what the faithful receive and the faithless receive is different in that the faithless receive “conditionally and sacramentally” an “analogous” set of benefits? Would the AAPC position paper be helped by such a distinction? Or is the AAPC statement leaving the anlogous/equivocal nature of the way in which “all the benefits” of Christ accrue to the elect and the reprobate unstated?
Is failing to state that there is an equivocation in the understanding of the application of the benefits a “way of speaking” to “sustain those differences”
Isn’t the point of the AAPC statement to say that the Bible is silent on some distinctions we’ve made too finely. That could certainly be construed as “undercutting” a distinction, could it not?
2) In addressing #14, AAPC position #10 and footnote 1 is in view. Does #14 hit the AAPC position, or miss it? Why?
I also might comment on the example used in the AAPC position of Saul vs David, Samson, et al. The matter of Saul’s empowerment by the Holy Spirit seems to have been a matter of consternation to Israel as well.
Is not the question “Is Saul also among the prophets” a retrospective puzzle (especially in 19:24)? Is the answer necessarily “yes”? The Spirit freaks him out, but doesn’t seem to enable holy living in him.
This is all said with my “dad” hat on, so take it as a bit of devilish advocacy.
Paul
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 14:01:13 -0000
From: “garver”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
pduggan wrote:
So are you taking issue with 2 of the things the AAPC statement says?
1) That in baptism, all the blessings and benefits of Christ’s work are given, except final perseverance
Hmmm. Does it actually say that? I can’t find any place in the AAPC statement that says that.
What it does say is: “By baptism one is joined to Christ’s body, united to Him covenantally, and given all the blessings and benefits of His work (Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:1ff; WSC #94). This does not, however, grant to the baptised final salvation.”
This, however, is perfectly consistent with final salvation being “offered” or “given” but not being “received” in such way that would grant final salvation. Otherwise, the statement is flatly contradictory since “all blessings and benefits” would have to include “final salvation” since surely that is the chief blessing and benefit of Christ’s work.
Regarding Saul it says, “he did not receive the gift of perseverance.” But the language here is that of “receiving,” not being “given” or “offered.”
And it also says, “In some sense, [the baptized] were really joined to the elect people, really sanctified by Christ’s blood, really recipients of new life given by the Holy Spirit. God, however, withholds from them the gift of perseverance, and all is lost.”
Hmm. Now this seems to me to run in the opposite direction of what the previous statements say. Prima facie, it seems to be saying that the baptized were not merely offered or given certain blessings and benefits, but were made recipients, but then God does not offer or give perseverance, but withholds it. I think such language might be biblically sustainable, but it’s not very good systematics.
I would gloss this statement, I suppose, by saying that the “sense” in which they were “recipients” is that the baptized were truly offered and given these blessings and benefits, but that God “withholds” perseverance, not in terms of its offer or the sufficiency of grace, but in terms its reception and, thereby, the efficiency of grace.
To be frank, I don’t much care for the AAPC statement and really have little interest in defending it. As a piece of private theological exploration, it’s okay. But for a church Session in our tradition to draw up a such as statement — with its scant attention to the categories and terminology of the systematic tradition and its equivocal use of the terms it does deploy — to draw up such a statement as an official doctrinal statement strikes me as rather foolish and as an open invitation to the kinds of criticism that we are seeing.
Of course, I’ve written similar things myself (though I’m much more happy and comfortable with scholastic language), but I would not have presented those writings within any kind of official church context.
Would the AAPC position paper be helped by such a distinction? Or is the AAPC statement leaving the anlogous/equivocal nature of the way in which “all the benefits” of Christ accrue to the elect and the reprobate unstated? Is failing to state that there is an equivocation in the understanding of the application of the benefits a “way of speaking” to “sustain those differences”
I’m not sure if “equivocal” is the correct word. “Not univocal” isn’t the same as “equivocal” since “analogical” is niether wholly univocal nor wholly equivocal. The teriminology of “not univocal” is at least used by some of those in the theological tradition of Dort in relation to questions of tepmorary faith and apostasy.
Isn’t the point of the AAPC statement to say that the Bible is silent on some distinctions we’ve made too finely. That could certainly be construed as “undercutting” a distinction, could it not?
Perhaps. But if the AAPC statement says that (or implies it), it’s wrong. The Bible is not silent on those distinctions, but provides a set of language games and practices within which such distinction are, at the least, implicit. Systematic theology is simply making explicit what is already there.
2) In addressing #14, AAPC position #10 and footnote 1 is in view. Does #14 hit the AAPC position, or miss it? Why?
It seems to me that the AAPC statement is aimed at epistemological and psychological distinctions regarded synchronically. From the standpoint of initial experience, grace is undifferentiated. Considered theologically, ontologically, and diachronically, however, such distinctions are necessary.
joel
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 09:38:04 -0600
From: “Rich Lusk”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
To be frank, I don’t much care for the AAPC statement and really have little interest in defending it. As a piece of private theological exploration, it’s okay. But for a church Session in our tradition to draw up a such as statement — with its scant attention to the categories and terminology of the systematic tradition and its equivocal use of the terms it does deploy — to draw up such a statement as an official doctrinal statement strikes me as rather foolish and as an open invitation to the kinds of criticism that we are seeing.
But Joel the AAPC document *is* traditional. The formulations given are precisely Augustinian! It seem to me the real problem is the critics have overly narrowed the tradition. Or they simply aren’t aware of the breadth of the tradition. Or they’re choosing to begin the traditon sometime in the 16th or 17th or 18th century. We so easily forget that people in the church actually did theology and wrestled with these issues before the scholastics came along!! But the AAPC is just Ausgustinianism, pure and simple. Maybe the AAPC document doesn’t use the categories of Reformed scholastisim, but our heritage is wider than that — stretching back to pre-Reformational theologians. It never makes a claim to be anything more than that.
Personally, I can think of a lot of reasons for preferring the formulations that Augustine came up with in pastoral letters written to struggling monks than the formulations of philosophically oriented scholatics writing for theological students.
I think part of the whole present fracas is over just what it means to be Reformed — and whether or nor Reformed folks can make use of pre-Reformational sources in their theologizing.
RL
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:01:55 -0600
From: “Rich Lusk”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
I should a footnote here to my comments on Augustine. Gus was a creative thinker with a fertile mind. He didn’t always formulate things in precisely the same way. So there are certainly places where he hints at the same kinds of distinctions that the Reformed scholastics would later make. But there are other places where he comes quite close to the kind of language used in the AAPC document, or to what I was getting at in my post on “covenantal grace.” I think that variety of formulation is a strength in Augustine, and actually reflects some of the theological diversity found within the NT. Again, part of the present fracas is over whether or not there’s one only *one right way* to formulate biblical truths. I find biblical truth so rich, it can be expressed in a myriad of ways, and our tradition will be very poor indeed if it only allows us one approach to deep, multifacted theological problems.
RL
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 16:07:13 -0000
From: “garver”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Rich Lusk wrote:
But Joel the AAPC document *is* traditional. The formulations given are precisely Augustinian!
Pfft.
Isn’t the reply to that going to be, “Heretics always want to cloak themselves in ‘going back to the sources’ or some kind of ‘biblicism’”?
The question, it seems to me, isn’t a matter of whether or not one uses pre-Reformational sources. I’ve got no problems with Augustinianism. But history doesn’t stand still. The church has moved on from Augustine. AAPC is not a 5th century Augustinian parish. It is a 21st century parish within the PCA, with all that this means and all the baggage that carries, for good or ill. By all means, engage in theological dialogue with the wider church—whether past or present. And when engaged in ecumenical context, accomodate your language to those wider and diverse traditions.
But when you are defending and defining yourself to your own tradition, the question is not what Augustine might have said — rather the question is what it means to be a church that exists within a confessional tradition. If the AAPC isn’t interested in the Reformed scholastics and Westminster Calvinism and can’t accomodate itself to those categories and terms in at least some contexts, then maybe it doesn’t belong in the PCA.
joel
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:10:19 -0600
From: burke
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Besides, I’ve got nothing to lose, since my livelihood is not dependent in any way upon affiliation with the PCA (though if anyone wants me out of the PCA they will have to pry my cold, dead fingers off of my Westminster Confession).
Joel,
The rest of us non-philosophy types really appreciate your humor. It’s so “down to earth.”
Burke
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 11:20:57 -0600
From: “Steve Wilkins”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
To be frank, I don’t much care for the AAPC statement and really have little interest in defending it. As a piece of private theological exploration, it’s okay. But for a church Session in our tradition to draw up a such as statement — with its scant attention to the categories and terminology of the systematic tradition and its equivocal use of the terms it does deploy — to draw up such a statement as an official doctrinal statement strikes me as rather foolish and as an open invitation to the kinds of criticism that we are seeing.
well, I appreciate what you’re saying here. A couple of things:
- We were being pressed on all sides to make some sort of public statement on our position on these issues (including receiving charges of duplicity from others because of our reluctance to state anything publicly). We really had little choice in the matter “PR” wise. This was very much “forced” upon us. So, whether the statement works or not, whether it helps or hurts, it is important that you understand that we weren’t simply sitting around thinking, “Ah, now what’s another ill-considered thing that we do to make things worse for our brothers?”
- I think all of us here have recognized that there are portions of our statement which could be worded better and which could benefit from more clarification. The statement on God “withholding the gift of perseverance” is certainly one of those things (if not the main thing), and I think it is a place that needs more thought and surely our statement can be improved there and elsewhere.
sw
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 17:55:02 -0000
From: “garver”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Steve Wilkins wrote:
well, I appreciate what you’re saying here. A couple of things:
Yes, thanks for those comments. Would it be permissible for me to allude to the gist of them in responding to the MVP report?
joel
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:18:10 -0600
From: “Steve Wilkins”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Yes, thanks for those comments. Would it be permissible for me to allude to the gist of them in responding to the MVP report?
sure.
sw
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:43:21 -0600
From: “Rich Lusk”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Joel wrote:
But history doesn’t stand still.
But if history doesn’t stand still, why must we go on using the expressions of 17th century theologians? :-)
Seriously, I understand your point. No doubt, we should try hard to make ourselves understood, as an aspect of loving our neighbors. And no doubt, if you want to play the “game” in the PCA right now you must use the language and categories of the PCA aristocracy/power brokers. And further, I would want to hold the Reformed scholastics in high regard and continue to use their material as much as possible, while also holding that tradition open to further critique and reform in light of emerging biblical-theological insights, and so forth. My bent (as a pastor) is to put things in more colloquial language, but I also understand the role that scholastic jargon can play in these discussions — which is why I’m glad you’ve chosen to write up a response to the MVP report, Joel. If anyone has a chance of being heard above the fray, it’s you.
The AAPC document was very limited in what it could hope to accomplish. In part it was intended to explain to AAPC’s own people language that was already in use in the congregation (the vast majority of whom are not scholastic theologians!). Granted, the congregation is not 5th century; but neither is it composed of folks who want to wade through a bunch of schaolastic categories developed in the 17th century either. It was a “teaching” document, made public and “official” because of the pressure to put something out there for the world to see. It was also intended to be a plain language (or Bible-language) explanation of what’s being said about covenant, salvation, and so forth for critics to (hopefully) get a better handle on the positons being laid out. Whether or not it works in those ways is highly debateable. Some people love it, others are less favorable. But it was never intended to be a “silver bullet” that would somehow silence all the critics or answer all the objections. It was aimed at focusing the discussion more sharply on the biblical and pastoral issues (with a nod to the historical issues as well, though that wasn’t the main intent). As I’ve said, I think there are a variety ways to approach these sorts of questions and that document represents only one among many. It’s certainly not above correction or supplementation.
For my own part, as I’ve written on these topics in my own way, I have tried to show how what I’m saying fits into a confessional scheme. I’ve never given up my basic Westminster Confessionalism. Thus, I have repeatedly made use of WCF 25.2, 10.4, etc. I think the problem, quite often, is *not* that we have failed to integrate our views into the wider Reformed tradition, but that we are simply dealing with critics who do not think what we’re saying ever was part of the Reformed traditon (the evidence presented by me, Joel, and others notwithstanding), or if it once was, it no longer should be (at least in the PCA). They will brook no compromise on this. Efficacious sacraments (and the set of issues created by efficacious sacraments, most especially the fact that not all who participate in the sacraments persevere) simply will not be allowed, at least not in some circles.
I also want to be open to “new light” God is breaking forth from his word. Sometimes that new light comes out of reflection back on older sources in view of more recent developments and questions. This is why I’ve been so intrigued by Augustine’s way of grappling with these issues. It’s usually a much simpler way of handling apostasy than you have in later Reformed scholastisism, but I don’t sense nearly the tension between election and covenant in Augustine that I do in most of the Reformed scholastics. So I think Augustine, among others, has a lot to offer the 21st century Reformed church, and recontextualizing his language (which was done in bits and pieces by the AAPC document) is a worthwhile project.
I think you have other issues on the table as well. What does it mean to uphold a “tradition”? What does it mean to subscribe to a confession? Is it a matter of theological style and language? Or do we have the freedom to transform the theological content of the confession from one cultural era to another? Also, how “catholic” should we strive to make our own denomination? Should we be contect with a body that defines itself exclusively in terms of itself — in terms of its own tradition? Or should be we pressing the ecumenical envelope, striving for formualtions of *our* theology that might create some kind of convergence with other traditions within Christendom? To play by the “rules” of the PCA’s elite right now is to play a very sectarian game. I’m not one to do much denominational cheerleading; I think faithfulness to the biblical vision of catholicity means that we hold our denominational committments pretty loosely. And, last but not least, is it ok to suggest that perhaps we need a new confession altogether — one that stays true to the historic Reformed faith, but brings in insights from the last 350 yrs and brings the lanaguage and philosophical presuppositions more up to date? I realize that such a project is only a pipe dream at the moment, but if it’s going to happen in the next 200 yrs, people probably need to go ahead and start talking about it now. It seems to me that the way the WCF functions in presbyterian circles, it’s really more of a museum piece. It’s an old wineskin that has outlived its usefulness as a confession of the Reformed church’s faith in the 21st century.
I actually see a lot of analogies between what the AAPC crowd is trying to do and what C Van Til was doing at Westminster seminary several decades ago. CVT wanted to do fresh, creative theolgical work. He knew he was Reformed at heart and did not feel intense pressure to put everything in exactly the same language that had always been used. There was freedom to put the old truths in new ways, in order to bring out new insights and connections. The difference between CVT and AAPC is that CVT was given the freedom — the elbow room — to make his discoveries and do his work. That freedom has closed out now, or so it seems. I thought it was very telling that in Monroe, Bishop Wright said (in private) he never could have become the theologian he was today if he had been reared in American Presbyterianism. Well, thank God he didn’t grow up as an American Presbyterian! But frankly, I’d like to be a part of a traditon that could priouce the “next N. T. Wright.” And I’d like to do so without having to become an Anglican!
I think the bottom line, however, is that no matter how much we put what we’re saying in scholastic terminology, no matter how many great Reformers we can use to back up what we’re saying, at the end of the day, if you believe in sacramental efficacy and the possibility of a real apostasy, you will be in hot water with these folks who are on the warpath. They simply cannot tolerate that kind of teaching right now. I think they are prone to misunderstand whatever language we use because what we’re saying cannot be fitted into their paradigms. That’s why the MVP document can set its sights on all of us, depsite our various differences in emphasis and language and approach. I’m hopeful things will change, and in many quarters I think they will. But I think there will also be a group (probably led by Lig Duncan) that will always label these views as “heresy” (or something similar) and will put both Steve Wilkins and Joel Garver into that category, no matter their other differences.
All that being said, Joel, I think your response to MVP is great and I hope it’s very effective. I think it will probably have a much greater impact outside of MVP, but that will be helpful nonetheless. I don’t think MVP will determine the direction of the PCA.
RL
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 13:31:40 -0500
From: “Brian D. Nolder”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Joel:
Are you suggesting that they become something like Dutch Reformed, or that there is a genuine discontinuity with AAPC and the Reformed tradition?
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:50:00 -0600
From: Jeff Meyers
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
On Feb 8, 2005, at 12:43 PM, Rich Lusk wrote:
And, last but not least, is it ok to suggest that perhaps we need a new confession altogether — one that stays true to the historic Reformed faith, but brings in insights from the last 350 yrs and brings the lanaguage and philosophical presuppositions more up to date? I realize that such a project is only a pipe dream at the moment, but if it’s going to happen in the next 200 yrs, people probably need to go ahead and start talking about it now. It seems to me that the way the WCF functions in presbyterian circles, it’s really more of a museum piece. It’s an old wineskin that has outlived its usefulness as a confession of the Reformed church’s faith in the 21st century.
Yes, it’s more than okay. It’s the demand of the hour, the calling of evry faithful presbyterian pastor who actually believes that Jesus intends to save modern people and culture.
JJM
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:53:27 -0600
From: “Rich Lusk”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Quick correction. I wrote,
“What does it mean to subscribe to a confession? Is it a matter of theological style and language? Or do we have the freedom to transform the theological content of the confession from one cultural era to another?”
I meant to wrtie in the last sentence there,
“Or do we have the freedom to transform the theological *language* of the confession from one cultural era to another?”
I had in mind something like what Mark H suggested earlier with regard to our language.
RL
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:59:22 -0600
From: Jeff Meyers
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
On Feb 8, 2005, at 12:50 PM, Jeff Meyers wrote:
Yes, it’s more than okay. It’s the demand of the hour, the calling of evry faithful presbyterian pastor who actually believes that Jesus intends to save modern people and culture.
Well, I suppose it might be argued that the WCF is a document unduly influenced by the emerging modernist epistemological culture in the 17th century. If so, then how much more important is it to confess afresh the Gospel in meta-modernist language and categories.
jjm
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 13:32:17 -0600
From: “James B. Jordan”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
On this matter of language and communication, try listening to Wright and Gaffin at the AAPC conference. Wright spoke in English. Gaffin spoke in WCF. Frankly, listening to Gaffin was bizarre. At least half the room was Episcopalian or Baptist, and I’m sure few if any of them could follow him through the labyrinth of presbyterian plutocratic terminology. WWJD. I kind of think that Jesus was not using traditional Phariseespeak, and that this was part of His problem.
It’s good that some of you are trying to express new Biblical insights into WCF-speak, but I’m glad I’m not in the PCA and don’t have to bother with it. And if Joel is right, and people who don’t want to bother with doing that probably don’t belong in the PCA (which is fine with me), then I have a prediction: There will be no PCA in 75 years.
JBJ
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 13:38:37 -0600
From: “James B. Jordan”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
On Feb 8, 2005, at 12:43 PM, Rich Lusk wrote:
It seems to me that the way the WCF functions in presbyterian circles, it’s really more of a museum piece.
The way the WCF functions in many presbyterian circles is exactly the way the saints function(ed) in Romanism. God is far away and dangerous, but we have these mediators who will go between us and God, especially Mary. The Bible is far away and dangerous, but we have the WCF to mediate between us and it. I see no difference in the mental processes involved.
Luther said that God is friendly and want to be with us, and does not want us using mediators. When we say that the Bible is friendly, they do to us what they did to Luther.
JBJ
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 11:26:17 -0600
From: burke
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
And, last but not least, is it ok to suggest that perhaps we need a new confession altogether — one that stays true to the historic Reformed faith, but brings in insights from the last 350 yrs and brings the lanaguage and philosophical presuppositions more up to date?
Perfectly ok. I think the Westminster divines would be appalled to find that we are still using the same Confession they wrote. But it ain’t gonna happen, not in my lifetime.
joel
But why not? All you guys keep saying it won’t happen in our lifetime, and I’ve been hearing that for a lifetime! But why not? What keeps Bh from convening an assembly of men friendly to Bh from every existing denomination, and writing a Bh, covenantal, catholic, pc inclusive confession, and then, once it’s perfected, putting it on the net for all the oppressed peoples of the church around the world to see and use? We could call it the “Evangelical Catholic Confession of 2007”, or something like that. We could easily have REC, PCA, OPC, URCNA, CREC, PCUSA, ECUSA reps to it, along with some greeks that Paul knows and some Romans that Joel knows. Technically, it wouldn’t be the “Church” that did it, but neither was the WCF; it was made up of all kinds of guys and backgrounds. If you want a “church” sponsor, I could probably get the CREC to sponsor it.
Burke
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2005 02:55:37 -0000
From: “garver”
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Rich Lusk wrote:
Also, how “catholic” should we strive to make our own denomination? Should we be content with a body that defines itself exclusively in terms of itself — in terms of its own tradition? Or should be we pressing the ecumenical envelope, striving for formualtions of *our* theology that might create some kind of convergence with other traditions within Christendom? To play by the “rules” of the PCA’s elite right now is to play a very sectarian game.
I agree with all of that. I’d much rather be spending my time building bridges with folks in other traditions and, as much as I have opportunity, I do.
But I also always want to do that from *within* the resources of my own tradition. Of course, that means having a certain flexibility about one’s own tradition and a willingness to speak that tradition in very different language — a project that seems very unwelcome by some leaders in the PCA.
Still, the face we show to those outside the PCA and the face we show inside may have to be somewhat different. To have the freedom to be catholic, to look outward, one might have to play the game by the rules witin the PCA as a way of maintaining legitimacy and keeping the attack dogs at bay, so to speak.
And, last but not least, is it ok to suggest that perhaps we need a new confession altogether — one that stays true to the historic Reformed faith, but brings in insights from the last 350 yrs and brings the lanaguage and philosophical presuppositions more up to date?
Perfectly ok. I think the Westminster divines would be appalled to find that we are still using the same Confession they wrote. But it ain’t gonna happen, not in my lifetime.
joel
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 15:03:03 EST
From: edencity@aol.com
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Dear Pastor Burke:
FWIW, the order of presentation should be the order of liturgy.
We are called by . . . . to make this confession, etc. with the doctrine of commmunion coming after the doctrine of word and seromn, and before ‘our commission therefore is’,,,,
Or days of creation or something like that.
FWIW
Love in Christ Jesus,
Chuck, unworthy servant
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 12:42:15 -0800
From: Daniel Dillard
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Perhaps the misuse of the WCF functions more like an icon (like the U.S. Constitution to some conservatives) than like the saints in Romanism. I suggest this because some WCFs most vociferous defenders seem not to hear the WCF.
Blessings,
Dan Dillard
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 15:03:31 -0600
From: burke
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
Chuck,
What? Speak English, dude. You’ve been in the post office too long. You going postal on me? On us?
Burke
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 13:29:26 -0800
From: Daniel Dillard
Subject: responding to the MVP Report
On Feb 9, 2005, at 9:26 AM, burke wrote:
But why not? All you guys keep saying it won’t happen in our lifetime, and I’ve been hearing that for a lifetime! But why not? What keeps Bh from convening an assembly of men friendly to Bh from every existing denomination, and writing a Bh, covenantal, catholic, pc inclusive confession, and then, once it’s perfected, putting it on the net for all the oppressed peoples of the church around the world to see and use? We could call it the “Evangelical Catholic Confession of 2007”, or something like that. We could easily have REC, PCA, OPC, URCNA, CREC, PCUSA, ECUSA reps to it, along with some greeks that Paul knows and some Romans that Joel knows. Technically, it wouldn’t be the “Church” that did it, but neither was the WCF; it was made up of all kinds of guys and backgrounds. If you want a “church” sponsor, I could probably get the CREC to sponsor it.
Do it!
Love in Christ,
Dan Dillard
