A specter is haunting the Reformed world — the specter of biblically grounded teaching on marriage, family, and elder qualifications. The threat is causing new ecumenical alliances to form, all calculated to meet the rising and imminent danger. TR Frank Smith is teaming up with openness theology, rabid anti-theonomist John Robbins is shoulder to shoulder with the theonomist Joe Morecraft, crypto-Lutherans in the west are cheek by jowl with anti-Lutherans in the east, and the lion lies down with the lamb.
Of course, it won’t do to try to distract attention away from the general familial disarray in the current Reformed establishment by saying that one disagrees with the teaching that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church. That wouldn’t fly. So one must say, regretfully, that the family books are all very well, but it is “unfortunate that the author is heterodox on justification,” or that “he owns half of Las Vegas and is a gambling impresario.” That’s the ticket!
What saith sola Scriptura? “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation” (Heb. 13:7). “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Matt. 7:16). But enough with the embarrassingly scriptural ad hominem. Some men want to defend ministerial credentials through shibbolethian propositions, making the truth walk around on stilts. Others, more biblically, want to do it through sons and daughters, children who love God and His Christ, and who embody and live the glories of propositional truth in an imitative and incarnate fashion.
By the way, another book on the family is at the printers now, and is due out within the next few weeks. It is entitled My Life for Yours. Let us, as the apostle Paul might say, keep on keeping on.