The Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference 2005 just concluded this last Wednesday, and I just got back from Louisiana last night. I’d like to briefly review the conference in three posts. Here in the first one I would like to thank the conference organizers and the participants for a very helpful conference, both in terms of …
Creedal Language
We are not engaged in a fight to recover biblical language simpliciter, but rather in a fight to recover the right to use biblical language when necessary. The vocabulary of historic liturgies, systematics, the creeds, and so on are also most necessary, and we should have no interest in ditching them unless absolutely necessary. Our …
Wilson and Fesko
Dr. Fesko’s critique interacts mostly with Jim Jordan, Rich Lusk, and Ralph Smith. In his critique, he frequently misses the point being made by these men, although I also believe he raises some legitimate questions. But when he comes to summarize his concerns, he does so in a way that expands his critique to include …
Jordan and Fesko
Dr. Fesko also takes issue with Jim Jordan on the subject of death and maturity. Before defending Jordan’s point, let me agree with Dr. Fesko’s objection on his use of terms. To use the word death to describe the transformation/glorification/maturation of Adam, had he not sinned, is, in my judgment, prone to do nothing but …
Smith and Fesko
Dr. Fesko also objected to seeing the covenant as part of the triune life, and spent a good bit of time answering some of the points raised by Ralph Smith on that score. “The legal element in the covenant is not a problem unless one argues, as does the federal vision, that covenant is part …
Some Responses to Dr. Fesko
Dr. Fesko is an Adjunct Professor of Theology at RTS, Atlanta, and is serving on a study commission of the OPC, a group tasked check out the federal vision. He recently released a paper toward that end, entitled “The Federal Vision and the Covenant of Works.” To that paper, I offer a few comments. The …
Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) Cool Quote #13
“This covenant is variously styled, from one or other of these several elements. Thus, it is called the ‘covenant of works,’ because perfect obedience was its condition, and to distinguish it from the covenant of grace, which rests our salvation on a different basis altogether. It is also called the ‘covenant of life.’ because life …
Yeah, Uh Huh Faith
John Robbins says the following, in an ostensible defense of Protestant orthodoxy. Gordon Clark apparently closed the back door “through which much of this Neolegalism has entered the churches: the notions that saving faith is different from belief, and more than belief, and that it is ‘commitment’ as well” (The Current Justification Controversy, p. 74). …
Federal Audio Stuff Available
A week or so ago I mentioned that the folks at St. Anne’s Public House had interviewed me together with Michael Horton on issues related to the Federal Vision. Well, the glad day when that interview can be made available has arrived, and so here it is. Of course, I was there when we recorded …
A Father Forever
In the Bible, personal identity is not primarily a question of some substance inside a man. But each man still has a nature, inherited from his father. So ontology is not a philosophical problem in the Bible, but rather a problem of generation. And when this generation is sinful, the only solution to the problem …