Well, okay, it now looks like I need to offer a brief comment on the FV critics’ espionage network. Here’s the deal.
Jim Jordan is the main dude at a ministry called Biblical Horizons. That ministry includes a private list discussion group, to which I belong. The list requirements concerning confidentiality are quite strict — for example, if someone offers up a prayer request, and someone else wants to pass that prayer request on, he first gets permission from the individual who posted it. Everyone on the list agrees to the rules in order to participate. In short, there is no way for someone to forward information from that list to others outside the list without breaking his word in a strikingly dishonorable way. So the first point is this: whoever passed on the contents of this conversation from 2003, making it public, is not behaving with any kind of integrity. Let me say this again: no member of the BH list could possibly pass on the contents of a conversation like this without breaking his word.
Second, this “leak” made its way to the meister of an anonymous attack blog, a guy named Mark T. All the indications are that his anonymity is very important to him, and that when the Mosaic warning comes to fruition in his case (“be sure your sin will find you out”), we will all say something along the lines of “that figures.” This conversation was posted on his blog under the title “Bag O’ Snakes” without any self-referential irony at all. But, to review, someone broke his word to get the material to Mark T, and Mark T cheerfully passed it on to the world. I am astonished but am somehow not surprised. In earlier stages of this controversy, we had people stealing and publishing minutes from our elder meetings.
Third, trying to justify this action (along with the need for anonymity) because the contents of the conversation were “so despicable” doesn’t work, even if the conversation were despicable, which it wasn’t. But even if it were, how does that justify breaking your word? If the BH discussion threads really were unedifying, then the offended soul should have told us all that, and resigned from the list with regrets. That would at least have been an honest response. As it is, we have an anonymous skulker who is willing to maintain to the world (so long as his name is not used!) that BH discussions were bad and evil, but who is the only person involved who actually broke his word. This is a person with a backbone like a kleenex that has been floating in the sink for ten minutes.
Fourth, I just now again read RCjr’s article that set off that particular conversation, and then through the entire conversation again, as it was posted. The whole thing seemed like a generally reasonable, backroom theological discussion to me. There was one point where Jim dismissed what RCjr was doing in a manner such as might be used by a Dutch Reformed farmer having some trouble with an obstinate cow, but he immediately corrected and modified what he was saying in a follow up. In this, he appears to have been responding to and agreeing with someone named Tim, whose point was apparently edited out of the transcript by one of our valiant reporters.
Fifth, I contributed two posts to that discussion, and I still agree with them, and stand by what I said. I am not ashamed of my points, I am not ashamed of the friends with whom I was interacting while making these points, and I am not ashamed of my baptized Christian name. This is more than can be said of the person who leaked this information, or of Mark T. They really like their points, but they are both ashamed of their names and of their friends, hiding them both away lest someone find out.
And last, I continue to number RCjr among those friends.