Letter to the Editor: God has used you in mighty ways in my life and the life of many of my congregants. I am wrestling with how to take our congregation from being a "grape juice" ...
Letters You Clearly Haven’t Read Yet
Really, Not Leaving at All
“The historic Reformed faith is a spacious mansion. We really need to stop living in the broom closet that some want to call true Calvinism. And it is possible to come out of the broom closet and not be in the process of leaving the house.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 706
The Great Shantytown Plausibility Structure
Introduction: On one level, the protests at Columbia should have been the easiest thing in the world to fix. All you needed was about 14 fire trucks and 28 fire hoses, all going full blast. The ...
A Doonesbury Dud
Okay, so this is not part of my regular pattern for blog posts, but I did need to say something. This won’t be an extensive post, but it will be an intensive one. You can get a sense of my concerns if you insert a Jeepers or a Crikey or some similar expression after each …
Logically Prior
“Do you recall that when I raised the point of the primacy of regeneration, leading logically to repentance and faith, not chronologically in stopwatch fashion, that I was responding to you guys making a big deal out of the traditional ordo? And that I said, fine, if you insist, this means that some form of infusion is logically prior to imputation?”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 700
This Is the Way
Tension in the Ordo
“In the ordo, the first item of business is regeneration, which is a transformation in us. It is a form of infused righteousness, a type of sanctification. If my heart is not changed, then I cannot believe the right way, and if I cannot believe the right way, then I cannot be justified. The order we affirm is ‘change of heart in me,’ ‘repentance and faith,’ ‘righteousness imputed to me,’ and then ‘ongoing changes in me.’ If [he] objects to this, then he can rewrite the Reformed ordo. But when he does that, he ought not to call that rewrite ‘walking in the old paths.’”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 697
Only LIving Things Act
“Life and obedience are essential characteristics of the instrumentality of faith, in just the same way that life is an essential characteristic of a seeing eye. But I do not see blue as a reward or payment for having a living eye. This does not make life irrelevant to the seeing however.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 694
Ten Thousand Camels
If you had a mischievous spirit about you, and you thought you detected a spirit of envy among some of your North American companions, you might ask them—at a nice restaurant over dinner, say, and with ...
Letters to Help You Fritter Away Some Time
Letter to the Editor: A question about paedocommunion (oh joy): Having not been to Moscow, how does paedocommunion function in CREC churches? Is it feeding the elements to practically-newborn ...