Contra mundum is a nice slogan if you can get it. I have been watching some of the internet discussion in the aftermath of the PCA decision at GA, and I decided I needed to say a little something about the following argument: “All these venerable alphabet combinations have condemned the Federal Vision — URC, OPC, RPCNA, PCA, GM, NATO, and countless others — and still you guys whine and complain. What makes you think that the entire world has failed to comprehend what you guys are saying? Hey?”
The use of this argument, with virtually no self-awareness at all, is actually an argument in favor of another observation I have made about all this. Those who go by the nickname TR are actually curators of the Reformed mausoleum, and not scholars in the Reformed tradition. The way we can tell this is that — in defense of keeping the marble floors of their mausoleum polished and shiny — they deploy Eck’s argument against Luther. Their blood stirs when they hear the story about Athanasius saying that he was contra mundum because they really like that kind of thing when is it behind glass in the museum of church history. But when someone actually stands up against the living and breathing ecclesiastical Mitred Ones, they haul this argument out as shamelessly as a theologian who thinks he is supposed to have an infallible magisterium. And they do this against people who they say are trying to “lead them to down the road Rome.” But how can you lead people to Rome when they are already there?