A friend pointed me to a new Master’s program at Knox Seminary, which actually looks pretty good. Click here. But that Auburn Avenue heresy stuff is like an insidious gas that permeates everything, up to and including this new Master’s program at Knox. In bold-face type (no less), they say the following: “We need to publish the reality that cultural choices have eternal consequences in salvation or judgment: character determines destiny.” Jumping Jehoshaphat and Land of Goshen! Just imagine if Rich Lusk had said this. In the space of a few short words, we have rabid Arminianism (choices have eternal consequences), we have worldliness (cultural choices have eternal consequences), and we have a particularly egregious example of John Robbins’ euphonically named Neo-Legalism (character determines destiny).
Of course, we know that if we were to ask the orthodox brethren at Knox about it, they would qualify these comments carefully. And when we heard their qualifications, we would believe them as brothers in Christ, and put our doctrinal revolvers back in the presbyterial holster. But when we say things like this (and we do, honestly), our qualifications after the fact do not matter. To extend the metaphor, the doctrinal bullets continue to whistle through our heretical hair. Oh, well.
On the bright side, Knox Seminary has realized the cultural issues are central to the future of the Reformed faith, and have devoted a non-Gnostic program to it. And good luck to them on seriously engaging with these cultural issues without getting in trouble with the Internet Wardens of Doctrinal Precision.