I have begun listening to the audio recordings of the recent conference at Westminster West on The Foolishness of the Gospel, and will make a few comments here from time to time as circumstances warrant. Initially, just a few remarks.
While it is quite true that Scripture speaks of the foolishness of the gospel, it is equally true that Scripture speaks of the foolishness of foolishness. Beware of affirming the consequent.
Second, it simply will not do to assume that the historic doctrine of justification under attack, and then to defend it against all imaginary comers. There are two issues here. One is exegetical theology — what did Paul actually say? But there is also historical theology — what was the actual position of the Reformers? By “position” I mean those things which they taught, wrote, said, and put in their catechisms. To treat the “federal vision” as a self-conscious challenge to the historic Protestant doctrine of justification when a number of us claim to be recovering the historic Protestant doctrine of justification is a bit thick.
And third, to mush E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright, Norman Shepherd, Steve Wilkins, et al., all together, “the better to generalize with,” and then defend this hopeless process because E.P. Sanders did it to the first century Jews is enough to make me call for the smelling salts.
“I object to how your leader E.P. Sanders blurs the dintinctions between disparate groups among first century Jews.”
“E.P. Sanders is not my leader.”
“And therefore I will do the same to you. For he is your leader.”
“Um . . . being from a podunk town in northern Idaho, I’m not used to this level of scholarly discourse. What can I say to this? Is not.”
“This process your leader has employed is fatally flawed. And that is why I employ it on his minions like you — to show that it is fatally flawed. A reductio ad absurdum, as it were.”
“I agree that this is screwy process, and it is part of the reason why I don’t listen to E.P. Sanders. It is also part of the reason why I don’t listen to Westminster West.”
But alas, I am listening to Westminster West. And I have a significant number of these CDs to go. I am listening to them in my pick-up truck, so if anyone in the Moscow area sees me driving around yelling at my windshield, this datum is likely to have something to do with it.