BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Nullifying the Word of God for the sake of academic reputation...

This is a post showing how (it seems to me) shame over the Bible's history of Creation has led to the (maybe) decline of Covenant Theological Seminary. But first, a short back-story...

Some time back I had a man in my congregation who had grown up Baptist and was pursuing graduate studies in science. One weekend he was home visiting his childhood church and he came under the influence of John Armstrong who--whether through preaching or conversation, I don't know--convinced him to stop graduate studies in science and begin graduate studies in theology. Being PCA at the time, I encouraged him to go to the PCA's Covenant Seminary over in St. Louis and he matriculated there a year or so later.

Watching him across the years is part of the reason I've warned people to avoid Covenant. There's more to say than this, but two things are worth highlighting... 

What do Paulites and R2Kites have in common...

My dear wife says this post is only for readers who know what R2K is, have watched Ron Paul in a couple of the debates, and are familiar both with Woody Allen and Peggy Noonan's essay exposing him. Others would do well to skip it. PS: If you like Baylyblog and love Ron Paul, save yourself some grief and don't click through...

Midwives, denominations, abortions, and my present political philosophy...

I don't write much about Indiana politics and government but it's caused me no small sadness to contemplate the term-limit-departure of our fiscally excellent governor a little over a year from now. Gov. Mitch Daniels will have completed his second term and will have to leave office.

If I am comforted in our loss of Mitch's magnificent fiscal leadership, my comfort comes from this: that his likely successor is a man, Representaive Mike Pence, who promises to govern with the same fiscal commitments while adding a theological framework to those commitments that promises to extend far beyond fiscal discipline, on to principles concerning many other areas of governance including the battlefields on which the destroyers of our nation and its states are focussing their revolution: sexuality, the Image of God in man, the origin and nature of sexuality and marriage decreed by our Creator in His Order of Creation, and so forth.

As you read through Daniels' penultimate State of the State Address delivered yesterday evening, you will gain a hint of why I respect him. He has been unflinching in disciplining the educationists of our state by a host of private initiatives that have finally brought competition into public education. True, he brags about over half of our state budget going to edcuation, and he seems to see higher education as an unqualified good. I disagree with both things as I disagreed with President Bush on similar matters. Mitch Daniels is not a wild-eyed enthusiast. He's a realist who really changed our state. Definitively. And reading, you'll see what difference it makes to each citizen of the state.

But there's something else I want to say, here.

Some thirty years ago, I was at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly to oppose their denominational abortion policy. My dear Mary Lee was pregnant and, since we were in the habit of having home births, I'd called the midwest representative of the PC(USA)'s self-funded independent medical insurance plan to ask if they'd cover the cost of our midwife? It was awkward. He hemmed and hawed and said he didn't know and would have to get back to me on it...

Neglecting the weightier provisions of the law...

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. (Matthew 23:23)

One commenter calls our attention to the blog of a writer of economic treatises popular within some Reformed circles who, in the linked blog post, makes the case that Federal laws against abortion are unconstitutional and that conservatives seeking federal action to protect the babies is the legal equivalent of liberals using the Constitution to declare baby-murder legal. Both sides abuse the Constitution for their own pet projects, this Theconomist argues.

(PLEASE NOTE: The paragraph above has been changed substantially in order to clarify that I meant for the words below to be more general than personal; but also that I did not intend them to be read as applying personally to the commenter, Scott, who provided the link to the other blog.)

Here's my own limited response. In the next day or so, though, we'll post another response written by a Presbyterian elder with significant appellate experience who currently serves as a civil magistrate in an high post of civil authority.

* * *

To argue that the federal government doing something to stop the wholesale slaughter of the nation's millions of defenseless infants is usurpation of powers is the sort of heartless rabbinical self-justification we should expect from those who tithe their mint and cummin. I've said over and over again that the Declaration of Independence was the basis for the mounting of our nation's revolution and the moral and legal context from which our Constitution was birthed and has any meaning or purpose yet today. The central purpose of our Constitution is the protection of the nation's citizens--not the protection of states' rights--and when that central purpose is defied or denied, the rest is straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I've quoted the Declaration in this discussion. Its words are clear. If our federal civil magistrates' hands are tied in stopping the slaughter of our nation's fifty million wee ones...

Rejoice each day...

Here's a good devotional Rev. David T. Myers will be writing each day. It's a ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America's Historical Center which is run by our good friend, Wayne Sparkman. Each day's reading will include short doses of church history and the Westminster Standards, plus honey from God's Word. Why not subscribe and make your commitment to read this devotional and five chapters of Scripture a day this year? It's not too late to start.

The only way Biblical Christians today can survive without going all ghettoish is to remind ourselves that every doctrine we live and teach has been boringly normal across the centuries of Church history. It's only the hirelings of our own time who call these doctrines monstrous. So subscribe to Pastor Meyers' devotional and innoculate yourself against becoming a sourpuss. We stand in full and joyful agreement with all those fathers of the faith who went before us!

(TB, w/thanks to David Mc.)

Man, who is but a maggot...

Where is sin? I've been reading Job and it struck me that this truth is completely absent from the church:

How then can a man be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is but a maggot--a son of man, who is only a worm! (Job 25:4-6)

Do your children know they are sinners? Do you and your wife know how desperately wicked you both are--that your hearts are unbelievably deceitful? Do you preach for conviction of sin in your flock? Do you share Jonathan Edwards' conviction that the doctrine of original sin is the key to conversion and revival? 

It's always struck me that the Reformed church seems incapable of preaching the sinfulness of sin. Yet doctrinaly, we continue to pay lip service to total depravity. How can we do this? What good is it to have a tool that we are in principle opposed to using? The demons have more faith in total depravity...

Amazon and pastoral care...

There are two views of the pastoral ministry that are diametrically opposed to each other and locked in conflict. The competing views, though, aren't spoken of or written about, and the conflict passes without public notice. Jeff Bezos highlights the conflict in this explanation he gave of Amazon's view of customer relations:

Interviewer: Two years ago, you bought Zappos. Was that an attempt to absorb their so-called culture of happiness and customer service?

Bezos: No, no, no. We like their unique culture, but we don't want that culture at Amazon. We like our culture, too. Our version of a perfect customer experience is one in which our customer doesn't want to talk to us. Every time a customer contacts us, we see it as a defect. I've been saying for many, many years, people should talk to their friends, not their merchants. And so we use all of our customer service information to find the root cause of any customer contact. What went wrong? Why did that person have to call? ...How can we fix it?

That, good reader, is the view of pastoral ministry prevailing in our Reformed churches today. I say this from long and close observation. Most Reformed men run from intimacy...

Roman Catholicism is a medieval heresy...

Under the post, Repenting of parachurch, Baptist childhoods..., one comment elicited this response from your scribe. I posted it as a comment, there, but also put it here for the benefit of those who don't keep track of comments. (TB)

Brothers, allow me a few responses, although they must be hopelessly brief considering the weight of these matters.

>>Be careful when you sling around words like apostasy, idolatry (Per Calvin we're all "fabricum idolarum") and heresy.

We are careful. That is, careful--very careful--to keep them alive. The proper word to use concerning Roman Catholicism is 'heresy'. Read Joe Brown's Heresies. Reformed pastors and elders use this word following our Reforming fathers's example because Roman Catholicism is a system of doctrine that leads souls to Hell. Systematically.

The center of Rome's system is the merchandising of salvation through...

Would I support our daughters enlisting in the military...

Several days ago under the post of the Majority Report of the PCA's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military (AISCOWIM), I'd been asked whether I would support our daughters enlisting in a non-combatant position in our U.S. Armed Forces, today? Here are the questions, along with my response. (TB)

Question from Sue: Tim, Could you answer a question about women in the military that I don't think is addressed in your/your committee's report? What is your position about women serving in military in non-combat roles...

What about women in combat...

Here is the Majority Report of the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military whose recommendations were adopted by General Assembly in 2002. Being this report's principal author, naturally I commend this document to our readers. If biblical Christians today studied this report and by faith embraced its doctrine of Creation Order sexuality, it would be a significant step toward the restoration of the unity of the Church. Too, these United States would again have salty salt and lighty light in the public debate raging over the meaning and purpose of sexuality. (TB)

* * *

MAN’S DUTY TO PROTECT WOMAN

We, the undersigned, endorse the Consensus Report, while realizing that Report lacks unity on the crucial matter of whether the recommendations it contains constitute the church’s wise counsel or a Christian’s scriptural duty. Believing that this is a matter of scriptural duty, we have joined together in writing this report to the end that we might set forth with confidence and clarity the full counsel—both New and Old Testaments—of the Word of God concerning this matter. Our report attempts to summarize three areas of evidence, as follows:

First, God the Father wages war in defense of Israel, His Bride; Christ our Savior fights to the Death defending His Bride, the Church; the Holy Spirit calls men as officers to guard and protect His Bride; the duty to protect the Garden of Eden and the warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given by God to Adam; husbands protect their wives, not wives their husbands. Thus we are taught the binding nature of man’s duty to guard and protect his home and wife.

Second, woman is the weaker sex and part of her weakness is the vulnerability attendant to her greatest privilege—that God has made her the “Mother of all the living.” Men are to guard and protect her as she carries in her womb, gives birth to, and nurses her children.

Third, we are to renounce every thought and action which tends towards a diminishment of sexual differentiation since God made it and called it “good.” [E.g. Scripture’s injunctions concerning women exercising authority over men (1 Timothy 2), women or men wearing clothing of the opposite sex (Deuteronomy 22:5), sodomy (Leviticus 20:15-16), etc.] Rather than a stingy attitude which minimizes sexuality’s implications, we ought to rejoice in this, His blessing.

It is our conviction that these areas, taken together, provide a clear and compelling scriptural rationale for declaring our church’s principled opposition to women serving in military combat positions.

When a man loves a woman, he will lay down his life to defend her, just as Christ loved His Bride and gave Himself up for Her. Men have proudly fulfilled this duty from time immemorial, demonstrating what A. A. Hodge in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith referred to as the law of nature, common to all nations, that is “unchanged” to this present day. Dying for their wives, regenerate and unregenerate men have done “by nature (the) things required by the law.”[1]

Hodge divides the Old Testament law into four categories...

"Turn him loose. He's no threat..."

Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:37)

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed to you by us... was not yes and no; but in him was yes. (2Corinthians 1:19)

An older pastor I respect is not opposed to women elders and pastors, yet I count him a close friend and listen to him carefully. Trained at Pittsburgh Seminary, he spent most of his life serving calls in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). Now though, like many of us, the PC(USA)'s promotion of sodomite pastors has led him to leave the denomination.

A few minutes ago, I received this e-mail from him in response to the video clip of Tim Keller being interviewed by Martin Bashir concerning the exclusivity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Heaven, and Hell. He wrote...

Like a weaned child...

A Song of Ascents, of David. O LORD, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; Nor do I involve myself in great matters, Or in things too difficult for me. Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD From this time forth and forever. - Psalms 131

Last night in an elders meeting with a couple suffering a troubled marriage, we were reminding the couple that God's goodness calls us out of our romantic idolatry of our husband (or wife) by shoving our nose in the truth of his sin. And ours...

Seeing our husband's sin exposes our own sin, also, as the Holy Spirit leads us away from worshipping man to love and adore God Alone.

The discipline is difficult. And if we are tempted to reject it and continue to hold our idolatry precious, it is the love of our Heavenly Father to intensify it until we unstiffen our necks. In that context we told of the warning Thomas Watson gives in The Ten Commandments that God sometimes disiplines a father's idolatry of his child by taking that child's life. This is God's love.

Two questions vs. ten cannons vs. what... (part 1 of 2)

(This is part one of two; here's the second post.)

Anyone who is familiar with Evangelism Explosion's two diagnostic questions...

1. Have you reached the point in your spiritual life where you know for certain that if you were to die tonight you would go to heaven?
2. If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, "Why should I let you into heaven," how would you answer?

...knows how very effective they can be at revealing a hope of salvation based in good works rather than faith in Jesus.

When D. James Kennedy began Evangelism Explosion in 1962, America's primary Christian influences were mainline Protestantism (whose denominations had reached their numerical peak in the 1950s) and Roman Catholicism. Despite deep sociological differences, these two branches of Christianity were united in teaching a salvation by works: the social gospel in mainline churches; the infused righteousness of Roman Catholicism.

Dr. Kennedy's "Two Questions" provided a powerful tool for addressing the error of both camps.

But Evangelism Explosion (EE) entered the scene at a tipping point in American religious history. For a hundred years America's primary Christian heresy had been the works-based salvation (semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism) of mainline Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

"Round them heaps of corpses rotting away"...

First you will raise the island of the Sirens,
those creatures who spellbind any man alive,
whoever comes their way. Whoever draws too close,
offguard, and catches the Sirens' voices in the air--
no sailing home for him, no wife rising to meet him,
no happy children beaming up at their father's face.
The high, thrilling song of the Sirens will transfix him,
lolling there in their meadow, round them heaps of corpses
rotting away, rags of skin shriveling on their bones...
Race straight past that coast! Soften some beeswax
and stop your shipmates' ears so none can hear,
none of the crew, but if you are bent on hearing,
have them tie you hand and foot in the swift ship,
erect at the mast-block, lashed by ropes to the mast
so you can hear the Sirens' song to your heart's content.
But if you plead, commanding your men to set you free,
then they must lash you faster, rope on rope.  

- Odyssey 12.45–6 (Fagles)

 Honestly, it must be the water. We've always pointed out how the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is more concerned about being nice guys than defending the Faith, and now we see Russell Moore playing nice with the womyn paid by Christianity Today to run their feminist blog, HER.meneutics. Here's a snippet...

Perspectivalism and the sectarian political advocacy of R2K ecclesiastics...

It's glorious how God leads intellectuals to shout their blindness. Things the simplest plowboy sees clearly are obscured by the intellectual's highly nuanced mists and vapors, so the plowboy is left to his centuries-old occupation of making fun of them. He's not anti-intellectual--he's anti-intellectuals.

Plowboys aren't envious of the intellectual's degrees or salary or light teaching load or clean soft hands and time alone with books. And it's certainly not that the plowboy is careless with reason, logic, history, and right and wrong. He's as careful with his tax forms as any making-of-books man, and much more sophisticated.

No, it's not that the plowboy is stupid and thinks stupid is good. Rather, it's that he's got his feet planted squarely on the ground while the intellectual is up in the mists and vapors forgetting that he's made of dust and to dust he will return. The intellectual speaks from on high while the plowboy speaks from soil and manure. The Christian sizing both up may be able to grasp that the plowboy's perspective makes all the difference for his grasp of truth and his growth in righteousness.

Applications of these fundamental truths are everywhere.

R2K intellectuals are a special interest group hounding the nation's citizenry about their pet policy issue. They're a PAC whose primary work is not on K Street and in the halls of congress, but out across the land. They publish and yell and chivy and curdle and yap at and hector and dog their fellow citizens with their political dogma, and they do it in the Name of God citing His Word and Church as their authorities...

"Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord..."

It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate (in which) they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth...

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord…

- Westminster Confession of Faith 23.2,3

But it often happens that the magistrate is negligent, nay, sometimes himself requires to be chastised; as was the case with the Emperor Theodosius. Moreover, the same thing may be said regarding the whole ministry of the word. Now, therefore, according to that view, let pastors cease to censure manifest iniquities, let them cease to chide, accuse, and rebuke. For there are Christian magistrates who ought to correct these things by the laws and the sword. But as the magistrate ought to purge the Church of offences by corporal punishment and coercion, so the minister ought, in his turn, to assist the magistrate in diminishing the number of offenders. Thus they ought to combine their efforts, the one being not an impediment but a help to the other.

- John Calvin, Institutes; 4:11:3

Observing radical two kingdom men in their atomistic machinations of this and that, only precisely there but absolutely not then or now, leads me to say that one of their gravest problems is that man is, by nature, given to worship. He was made for this.

If he will not bow to his Creator, he won't stop bowing; instead, he'll bow to idols. Scripture says "Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord," and the understood alternative is not the enlightened nation that has adopted an official no-god-at-all called "separation of church and state." If a nation does not have God as their god, they are in thrall to demons. And their subjection is not only as individuals, but corporately as families, cities, states, and nation.

There is the nation whose god is the Lord and there is the nation whose god is an idol of demons--those are the only two possibilities. Man was made to worship. He can't help himself.

Thus while R2K men are scurrying around trying to shore up the separation of church and state that they hope will provide us a few more years of peace, our presidents--both Democrats and Republicans--never stop constructing the temples and altars of Molech. And this is only to cite one example, albeit the bloodiest and most pathetic one...

These ones were born in Zion...

It's time to do the numbers. Lucas and Heather and Tenile report there are twenty-four children under a year and sixty who are five and under at ClearNote Church of Bloomington. Including the fifteen or so mothers carrying unborn Covenant children, that brings us to about seventy-five children five and under. How God has blessed us!

Cutting the grass today, I was listening to the Psalms and heard this:

The voice of the LORD makes the deer to calve And strips the forests bare; And in His temple everything says, “Glory!”  - Psalms 29:9

If you think it's weird to talk about children and births, read the Old Testament. I dare you.

The blessing of Roger Nicole and his lectures on the authority of Scripture...

This past year, my dear friend and father-in-the-faith Dr. Roger Nicole went to be with the Lord. Other than family members, there are only a couple birthdays recorded each year on my calendar, but one of them has been Dr. Nicole's. His teaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary was in a category far beyond any professor I've sat under before or since (and I've had some superb profs).

I'll never forget Dr. Nicole's lectures in Systematics I on the doctrine of Scripture. One day he began by asking our class a series of questions probing our knowledge of the book of Psalms...

Sin, temptation, and the Campuscrusadification of the Church...

When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?”

And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:25-26).

Again, here's a response to a question asked by "Jay" under the post, "Must a gay man go straight?" I thought it best to put the response here on the main page as a post.

Jay asked: "I do know other men and women who struggle with homosexual temptation, who not only reject copulation but also gay identity and culture, but who do not have any heterosexual desires. Are they saved?"

Sorry for the lack of response. The post took all my time for the blog yesterday so I'm playing catch-up.

First, I'm doubtful these men and women you know who struggle with homosexual temptation actually reject gay identity and culture as clearly and with the finality you indicate. If we live in a culture that hates sexuality as God made it; if we pursue androgyny in the pulpit in the way we preach (see the category of Baylyblog titled "gelded discourse"), in our appearance--hair length and style, for instance; if our  men are physically vain (whether macho buff or femmie bling and piercings or a sweet combination of both); it's likely no Christian tempted by homosexuality has really turned away from androgyny to Biblical manhood and womanhood. Made an effort, sure, but today within the Church there are precious few heterosexuals who pursue Biblical manhood or womanhood.

So being "straight" in our sexuality as the Bible presents manhood and womanhood is exceedingly rare, today. Men are narcissists and refuse to man up, taking responsibility for themselves or others...

Calvin on Baptism: "hypocrites ...glory in a naked and dead sign"

Some noticed my comment under another post, that I do not think men should place their children, wives, or themselves under the care of Lutheran pastors and churches, today. Why not?

Principally because modern Lutherans administer, teach, and write about the Sacraments in a way that leads tender souls to trust in the ritual and the elements rather than Jesus Christ. Here's the opening paragraph from a Concordia Publishing House pamplet distributed at no cost in the foyers of Missiouri Synod Lutheran churches around the country. Titled "What About Holy Baptism," it opens with this paragraph:

Suppose for a moment that there was a doctor who had such incredible talent that he could prevent people from dying, and bring those who had died back to life, never to die again. Just imagine how people would do whatever they could to be treated by this doctor! Now consider that in Holy Baptism, God actually does give us the gift of eternal life! Let's learn more about this marvelous blessing. (The pamplet goes on to make statements about the connection between "the Word" and the water, and once or twice faith is mentioned, but the first paragraph is an accurate representation of the whole.)

This is sacramentalism and it destroys souls. Yet sacramentalism is foundational to much of Christendom today. It permeates Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Episcopalianism, and Roman Catholicism, and it is connived at by many Reformed and Presbyterian denominations and pastors. In fact if we're honest we'll admit that the sacramental error is cheek-by-jowl next to every Biblical practice of infant baptism, bedeviling paedobaptist churches just as the sacramentalism of decisional regeneration bedevils credobaptist churches.

It is never, ever right to lead the souls under our care to believe that Baptism saves us...

Presbyterians and baptists bicker like junior high school girls...

Sitting in presbytery ordination exams, many times I've heard the question, "What is the proper mode of baptism?" The required answer, of course, is "sprinkling," and that's what most every candidate says. Then the candidate is asked this follow-up question: "Will you baptize by immersion if asked to do so?" Well-schooled candidates respond with this shibboleth, "Well, I suppose an unusual situation could arise in which I would be willing to do so, but sprinkling is the proper mode and I would only deviate from that mode for an extraordinary reason." Some overzealous men, though, win brownie points by responding, "No and never! Live presbyterian or die!"

Presbyterians and baptists bickering with each other like teenage girls--that's what this presbytery ritual is all about. Assuming raising Covenant children is not the only form of evangelism presbyterians are doing in our day, we can expect adult baptisms in our work and in most of those cases it's our practice to immerse...

The Sacraments belong to the Church...

Now since this charge is expressly given to the apostles along with the preaching of the word, it follows that none can lawfully administer baptism but those who are also the ministers of doctrine. When private persons, and even women, are permitted to baptize, nothing can be more at variance with the ordinance of Christ, nor is it any thing else than a mere profanation. - Calvin on Matthew 28:16-20

Increasingly, the session of ClearNote Church of Bloomington has been receiving applicants for membership who have been baptized by Cru girlfriends, their parents, a parachurch aquaintance, or almost anyone other than a church officer administering the Sacraments as a fulfillment of his office.

We've worked through this carefully, finally coming to the conclusion that baptisms done privately by friends and relatives are not true baptisms. There are many issues, here, and the arguments are long and involved, but at the end of it there was no doubt in our minds that the Sacraments are given by our Lord to the Church--not to individuals and families--and that to be a fulfillment of our Lord's commands, they must be administered by the officers our Lord has called and set apart to lead His Church.

For those with ears to hear...

"Saving people: THAT'S what the church is all about!"...

Imagine a fortress, absolutely impregnable, provisioned for an eternity. There comes a new commandant. He conceives that it might be a good idea to build bridges over the moats—so as to be able to attack the besiegers.

Charming! He transforms the fortress into a country retreat, and naturally the enemy takes it. So it is with Christianity. They changed the method—and naturally the world conquered. [1]

My wife ran into a friend in the supermarket whose husband works for a large parachurch organization. Their small talk went from this to that, eventually turning to the friend listing for my wife a number of churches she and her husband had attended the past few years. Our friend had nice things to say about each church. Then she brought her list to a conclusion with the chipper exclamation, "Saving people—that’s what church is all about, isn’t it!”

This drew my mind back almost thirty years to an observation my Dad used to make about evangelicals’ single-minded focus on evangelism: “Evangelicals are only interested in getting people saved. And after he's saved, as far as they're concerned he might as well die and go to Heaven because it’s all over.”

Is there a purpose to our lives after we’ve placed our faith in Jesus? Does God have any larger plan for us...

Quick now, no peeking...

Revelation 19:7-8 starts,

Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is _________.

Now the test: how does the verse end? What is the "fine linen, bright and clean" of the bride of Christ by which she has made herself ready for the Lamb? And now that you've looked it up, is the answer what you expected?

(DB)

 

Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord...

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God... (Hebrews 12:14,15 KJV)

By way of Wes White, here's a post from someone who's been thought to be a standard-bearer for confessionalism's ridicule of the pursuit of holiness in which he states clearly that there is no necessary conflict between doctrine and piety. But rather that, historically, those who have written and affirmed the Reformed confessions have been at the forefront of the pursuit of holiness. Thank you, Michael Horton, for this post which may do some much-needed work among us.

 

Pascal on the Radical Two-Kingdom (R2K) error...

Speaking of excellent summaries of aberrant movements within the Church, Darryl Hart has outdone himself with this one. If you read nothing else critiquing the Radical Two-Kingdom error, it's sufficient to read this and drop it. That's assuming at some point you've read any historic Church father or historic confession or catechism on God's Moral Law. Here's Son Joseph's comment:

(These men) are just casuists. I've thought that again and again. (They're) in fine form, claiming that states can't sin...; and that since states can't sin, individuals can't sin if they are pursuing anything in the political arena, including the legalization of prostitution.

Pascal refuted them adequately in the Provincial Letters. I've included a quote from Letter 7 below, which highlights how...

Home schoolers split over Ken Ham and Peter Enns...

(Tim) When I was younger, I used to say the homeschooling movement was one of the most encouraging signs in America, today.

Government has no business engaging in religious instruction, yet public schools do almost nothing else. Through the training and certification of government school teachers, education's oligarchs rule public schools with an iron fist and they are determined to wrest the minds and hearts of children away from their fathers.

My parents graduated from Wheaton College back in the forties and one of their friends went to Columbia University to get his doctorate. He reported Columbia's faculty and grad students were committed to using government schools to foment rebellion in the home, telling of a party in celebration of John Dewey's ninetieth birthday at which faculty and grad students discussed the utility of government schools for undermining parents' efforts to pass their religious commitments on to their sons and daughters. Their plan was simple: they would train public school teachers to serve as front-line missionaries for the godless paganism sold to the parents of government schoolchildren as "separation of church and state."

This and other things led to my parents working with several couples to start a new Christian school outside Philadelphia called Delaware Country Christian School. Mary Lee and I followed in their footsteps, joining with a few couples here in Bloomington to start Lighhouse Christian Academy. Before we finish educating our children we'll have used Christian schools, a Christian college, a public university, a secular college, public schools, home school, and a home school co-op.

What education do we think is best?

"This woman, at least, will be saved by childbearing..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Shelly) It disgusts me to have to direct Baylyblog readers to Roman Catholic sites as often as I do, but there's no helping it. Reformed men and women are so busy sinning so grace may abound that there's almost no comparable teaching in the Reformed world. And certainly not in the PCA--I defy you to show me one single article this spectacularly beautiful and sanctifying for women published anywhere under the auspices of the PCA. In fact, on any site having any affiliation to the PCA. Or rather, any site affiliated with any of the chest-thumping Reformed men: Together for the Gospel. Acts 29. Desiring God...

Brothers, if you want to do a more Biblical job of loving your wife, read this. Sisters, whether married or single, if you're willing to trade in your iPhone and laptop for the salvation 1Timothy 2:15 promises woman, read this.

There's nothing more foundational to godliness in Christ Jesus than your femininity.



Roman Catholic deacon renounces her ordination...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) Repentance is such a wonderful thing. When our church transferred from the PC(USA) to the PCA, during my transfer exam on the floor of Northern Illinois Presbytery I was asked what I believed about the ordination of women to the office of pastor and elder...

"Scholar-priests trained to decipher the arcane tongues..."

(Tim) From a January 3, 2011 New Yorker article titled, "God's Librarians: the Vatican Library enters the twenty-first century," here's an explanation of Rome's many-century opposition to laymen reading the Bible that strikes me as pertinent to the scientific exegetes who write books and teach in reformed and evangelical seminaries and colleges, today:

(The Vatican Library) may possess some of the most ancient manuscripts of Scripture in existence, but for centuries the (Roman) Catholic church held that ordinary people shouldn't be able to read the Bible--that the Old and New Testaments themselves should be a kind of "secret history" for everyone but the scholar-priests trained to decipher the arcane tongues in which they were written.

The modern scientific exegete has done the medieval equivalent of denying Scripture to the layman by...

The Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology...

(Tim) Under an earlier post, Rick Phillips commented:

I should not pass up a chance for a gratuitous invitation to the 2011 Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology which meets in Portland (2/25-27), Grand Rapids (3/18-20), Greenville (4/1-3), and Philadelphia (4/29-5/1). The conference theme is the doctrine of adoption. The preconference is on gender relationships, with me and Steve Lawson teaching (Joel Beeke in Greenville). I am also doing a Saturday seminar on male leadership in the church. I think the Philadelphia finale is live web casted. Please pray for God's blessing on his Word.

By all means, readers near these cities should think about going. Years ago, we three Bayly brothers attended and it was quite helpful. And when you remember the conference, please pray for the ministry of the Word.

Letters to Paul, VI: It's God's glory to choose some, so why hide it?

“Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21)

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, five, and six--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. At the end of the post is a note from David on the purpose of this series addressed to "Paul," a Zambian Christian leader.)

Letters to Paul, VI: Let's Stop Limiting the Greatness of the Atonement

Dear Paul: You may think that American Christians talk a lot about the elect, but I have to tell you, they don’t. You could attend a Bible-believing church for a long, long time (years) and never hear the word, “elect.” You could attend a Reformed church for a long, long time before you ever heard a sermon on the doctrine of election. 

And if a pastor does preach on election, he has to qualify it so many times in order to reassure his church and any visitors who might be attending and his elders and his wife, that he does not, in fact, believe in election. Whew! That was a close one...

So deeply ingrained is the egalitarianism of American culture that we will not...

A four-year-old boy wants to know...

(Tim) Not saying who, but one of my grandsons saw a pic of Mt. Rushmore the other day and asked his mother, "Why did those men get turned into rocks?"

Kids raised in the dispensationalist error don't even have the right questions, do they?

 

 

Letters to Paul, V: the heart of the Atonement...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul (V): The Heart of the Atonement

Dear Paul: When lecturers teach on the atonement, they often start by talking about various theories of the atonement that have come up in the history of the church. The Christus victor (Christ the Victor) theory talks of how our Lord defeated Satan by His work on the cross. The moral influence theory talks of how Christ was an example for us to follow. The penal substitutionary theory talks of how Christ took our penalty and bore it; He took our place and bore our punishment.

Today, the Christus victor view is “popular”. It lets us talk way over our head about the powers of darkness and corporate evil and the sins of warfare and elitism and consumerism and on and on, as if we even know what we’re talking about. The moral influence theory is also popular. When we see what Christ has done, doesn’t it kindle within you a flame to be like Him? Doesn’t it make you want to ask, “What would Jesus do”? Doesn’t it make you want to be a better person?

Isn't having lots of children an Old Testament thing?

(Tim: under an earlier post, I responded to a dear brother who asked the same question we all have--namely, isn't being fruitful and multiplying more an Old Testament than a New Testatment command?)

Dear Brother, don't be dismayed. About 99.999% of Reformed officers in America today--in fact, 99.99% of any Reformed officers since Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) engaged in civil disobedience and got the Supreme Court of these United States to reverse our nation's Comstock laws last century--have believed what you articulate. Here's a more crass way of puting it:

We've been fruitful, so let go of this Old Testament patriarchal take-woman-into-the cave-and-have-your-way-with-her neanderthal mindset. It's so demeaning to women. Haven't they suffered enough already? Do they have to spend their lives at home making babies, cooking, and changing diapers? Would any servant leader do that to his wife?

Please don't be offended. I know this is not how you put it. But having known and loved many Reformed officers over the years, this is a pretty accurate summary of the state of our obedience. We've evolved. We've learned scientific truths the Reformers didn't know. We need to focus on the quality--not the quantity--of our childrearing. We need to educate our daughters as well as our sons, and give them a chance to live...

Letters to Paul, IV: the blood Atonement was necessary...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul (IV): The Blood Atonement was Necessary

Dear Paul: The world we live in is violent. You know that from your background as a soldier. The violence in our world is a result of sin. My sin. Your sin. The sin of Ian Smith, the sin of Kenneth Kaunda, the sin of Joshua Nkomo, the sin of Robert Mugabe, the sin of the OAU, the sin of the leaders of England, the sin of Jimmy Carter, etc.

Jonathan Edwards tells us it all goes back to God’s command (“you shall not eat” from that one tree in the garden), the penalty (if you do, “you shall surely die”) and man’s specific disobedience (they “ate”). He is surely correct...

Wise as serpents, harmless as doves...

For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsmen; these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business. You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all. Not only is there danger that this trade of ours fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be regarded as worthless and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence.” When they heard this and were filled with rage, they began crying out, saying, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:24-28).

(Tim) The newly inaugurated governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, said this inside a Christian church from that church's pulpit during a worship service: "Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother." 

ABC reports:

A spokesman for the Anti Defamation League said the governor's comments were "stunning" and "distressing" and were tantamount to proselytizing.

"It is stunning to me that he'd make those remarks. It's distressing because of the suggestion that he feels that people who aren't Christian are not entitled to love and respect. On the day that he is sworn in as governor, he's sending a statement to the public saying if you're not Christian you can't be with me. From our point of view that is proselytizing for Christianity and coming very close to a violation of the First Amendment."

Let me keep reminding us that the much-ballyhooed separation of church and state that lulls a certain type of naive Christian man to sleep is a figment of our imagination and this becomes more clear each day. What was meant by freedom of religion by those who wrote and adopted our U.S. Constitution was freedom to acknowledge and worship the Only True God according to the leading of our own consciences. It was never meant to allow Islam or the fools of evolution who say there is no God the same protection as Christians. This is a simple historical fact and is avoided at all costs by those who live in a dream world and desperately want to believe secularism is a tolerant religion.

Exactly like the ancient Roman Empire, America's laws and civil magistrates and the schools they force us to fund are supremely religious and utterly intolerant. The religion is secularism and it's committed to outlawing true Christian faith. Those Christians who think they will be allowed to practice Biblical faith under secular civil magistrates are blind to the reality of their own lives as well as the lives being prepared for their children and grandchildren...

The complementarian hermeneutic: Adam and Eve/Adam and Steve...

(Tim, w/thanks to Joseph) If you'd like to see into the future of churches that market themselves as Evangelical or hip and Reformed, this article gives a clear picture of how it will fall out next with sodomy. First we threw out God's Order of Creation concerning patriarchy and next we're going to throw out God's Order of Creation concerning heterosexuality. But the work will be hidden behind the high moral ground of past church reforms in slavery and male dominance, and the wreckers will be chattering on about love.

If we could deny the application of Adam first, then Eve, to anyone other than Christians, and only among Christians to tie-breaking votes at home, men preaching Sunday mornings, and women having voice but no vote in our elders meetings, the next step is only logical: we'll deny that God creating Eve (rather than Steve) for Adam bars practicing sodomites from church membership and we'll think it's progressive to refer to heterosexual marriage as "God's ideal" while approving monogamous sodomite unions as a worthy second-best. Outside the Christian home and Church, we'll seek to repeal laws against sodomy because, like patriarchy, heterosexuality is a private Christian truth.

Trimming God's Word and authority is a coherent strategy that moves on to the next project and giving away territory to Satan never causes him to be less aggressive on his next mission. Every last bit of territory we concede will serve him well as the staging ground for his next attack on God's Order of Creation.

Some complementarians have written about the inevitability of the feminist hermeneutic giving birth to the homosexualist hermeneutic. By this they only mean that the complete denial of Adam's headship over Eve will also result in the complete denial of God's gift of Eve to Adam and His limiting of sex to monogamous heterosexual marriage. They're right, as far as they go. But they fail to see the inevitability, also, of their own minimalistic complementarian hermeneutic giving birth to an equally minimalistic heterosexualist hermeneutic...

Catechesis with rhythm and rhyme...

(Tim, w/thanks to Gandalf) Honestly, when my African-American brothers do this superb work, I'm cranked. Think of a new movement of catechizing led by Mike Lockett and Shai Linne ! God is good! Souls are returning to Biblical faith led by black men feeding them doctrine.

Check out the lyrics under "Puritan Rappers 1" and "Puritan Rappers 2." Then go and support these men's work.

Cool Reformia...

(David) Under the Labor Party that governed prior to the last general election, Great Britain finally achieved what had escaped her for hundreds of years of empire. She became cool. Though frequently stuffy, stubborn, vindictive, generous, arrogant, wise and pigheaded, she had never come close to the detached affect of cool. Cool was Gallic. Anglo Saxons did blood sweat and tears. And then Tony Blair defeated John Major, ushering in Cool Britannia and ending Rule Britannia not with tears or a funeral but with a decade-long party.

So too, the Reformed movement in America appears to be dying in a spasm of cool. Being young and Reformed in America has become the one thing it never was, hip. And the central pillar of the Cool Reformed movement is a celebration of grace as the all-in-one Swiss Army knife solution to the onerous problem of God's moral law. Cool Reformed is comprised of legions of young (and not-so-young) self-proclaimed ex-fundamentalists who claim to have found deliverance from the demons of legalism in a newfound Reformed understanding of the Gospel of grace. 

Darryl Hart's emanations and penumbras...

(Tim: responding to Darryl Hart's efforts to shield his R2K novelties behind the Indiana Constitution, an Indiana attorney writes...) Reading Darryl Hart’s comments on this post, you might get the impression that the Indiana and U.S. Constitution grant freedom to blaspheme and commit idolatry. They don’t.
 
The two sections he cites from the Indiana Constitution say nothing about blasphemy or idolatry. Section 5 provides: “No religious test shall be required, as a qualification for any office of trust or profit.” That means no religious test shall be required to qualify for any office of trust or profit. Section 6 provides: “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution.” That means no money may be drawn from the state treasury to benefit any religious or theological institution.
 
If you search the debates on the revision of the Indiana Constitution (1850), you won’t find the word “blasphemy” anywhere in the 2,107-page record. (You will find the word “idolatry”—in a quote from Bentham decrying the technicality, obfuscation, and hyper-formalism of the law “that make a man doubt the reality of the object spread out before his eyes.”) Don’t take the word of a historian or lawyer for it. Go to Google Books and see for yourself. (Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution for the State of Indiana (Volumes I and II).) At Indiana’s 1850 constitutional convention, there were no debates over or hurrahs for liberating the blasphemer from the dark night of his oppression. Nor will you find in Indiana any subsequent judicial hocus pocus creating a right to blaspheme.
 
By the way, you will find the Framers’ habitual use of Scripture...

Reformed leaders, their personal truths and private perquisites...

(Tim, w/thanks to Mick) Excellent post by Doug Wilson. If you want to read him, don't bother; but if you don't want to read him, you simply must.

In passing, let me note here that, at the first meeting I attended of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood--the organization that gave us that mincing eight-syllable construction "complementarianism"--several of the more prominent council members shut down an attempt by a younger man to get CBMW to oppose women combatants in our armed forces.

It was clear the thought of CBMW making any statement about the application of God's Order of Creation outside the Christian home and church petrified them. Manhood and womanhood were private truths for the people of God, only.

It was much like the approach taken by Covenant Theological Seminary's resident ethicist David Jones who...

Redemptive-Historical rap...

(Tim) At our recent Christmas Sing-A-Long, Church of the Good Shepherd's Mike Lockett rapped a Redemptive-Historical sermon he'd written that had me meditating on the basic doctrinal truths of God's Word. Ask some of your own young men to write a rap that preaches the Fall, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, then send a recording to us for posting here on Baylyblog. Thanks, Mike and Taylor, for busting me out of my ghetto.

The Redemptive History

 

The full Sing-A-Long can be enjoyed online here.

Luther on the Gospel-grace of the Law...

(Tim) At times, it seems best to promote a discussion to the main page. Readers lose track of discussions in the comments under old posts. Here's one such discussion that I'm promoting for reasons I hope are obvious.

It's my conviction that the endless mantra of grace that permeates our Evangelical/Redeemer/Westminster/Campus Crusade/R2K/Covenant world leads to us knowing little of grace because we despise God's Law and repentance.

In the midst of a discussion bearing on this matter, the historian Darryl Hart asked me to clarify what I meant when I spoke of the grace of the Law--that to preach the Law is Gospel preaching and that the Law is our Gospel schoomaster or tutor? Here I respond:

Scripture says:

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24).

This is the great failure of Gospel preaching in our time, and the reason for the absence of fruit within our churches. We fail to preach the Law, instead trying to save unregenerate sinners from the indignities of repentance. We preach grace without leading souls there through the Law. We repudiate the Schoolmaster. It's the habit of pastors only to address the regenerate within the Covenant Community while outside that Community we gag preachers, leaving Gospel proclamation and conversion to Campus Crusade...

Letters to Paul, III: language in the Emergent Church...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: The Atonement as Cosmic Child Abuse

Dear Paul: Leaders in the Emergent church like Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke have criticized the Bible’s teaching on the atonement. Of course, they don’t put it like that, but this is truly what they are doing. They say they’re criticizing one popular theory of the atonement and use that criticism to undercut the teaching of the Bible.

They say that the way the doctrine is traditionally formulated amounts to child abuse...

A must-read for anyone considering deaconesses or woman deacons...

(Tim) Looking for Christmas presents? It's too late, I guess, but readers who want to be innoculated against dogmatic pronouncements by people who don't know what they're talking about concerning women officers or woman deacons or deaconesses in church history would do well to buy and read these two books:

Deaconesses: An Historical Study by the eminent Roman Catholic historian of liturgy who died in 2000, Fr. A. G. Martimort; and A historical and Biblical examination of women deacons by Brian Schwertley.

If you're going to buy only one of the two, make it Martimort. He's the final word and you can take a peek at his work here.

Letters to Paul, II: language in the Emergent Church...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: Let’s Stop Trying to be More Holy than God

Dear Paul: Certain Christian leaders in America are spreading confusion on the doctrine of the atonement. They don’t like the way the Bible and the Christian tradition have put things about the death of Christ so they’re proposing “new models,” “a new way of thinking about the death of Christ,” “a new vision,” “an exciting proposal that retains the best of the old and recasts it with a fresh perspective.”

Notice the emotions that come from the way they express themselves. It all sounds so promising, so inviting, so reassuring. It makes you ready to reject the old and accept the new, not for any real reason, but just because of the words they use...

Letters to Paul (I): language in the Emergent Church...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: Language in the Emergent Church

Dear Paul: I want to write a few letters to you about the atonement of Christ, criticizing several teachings that are coming from the west. But first I need to write one about language and communication styles.

A number of American Christian writers today have adopted a style that feels very inviting. They ask a lot of questions. They word their statements in a way that seems humble. They admit that they don’t have all the answers. They show an admirable hesitancy in making truth statements. They don’t rebuke people but want to leave us all feeling affirmed, one of the group, encouraged, like a fellow pilgrim on a journey...

Lessons to Learn from Jonathan Edwards on the Atonement, IV...

(Lucas: This is the fourth in a series by David Wegener. Here are the first, second, and third.)

5. Possibility of the Atonement. God’s justice can be satisfied. If it is possible for God to be dishonored, for His majesty to be held in contempt, for His authority to be trampled upon, then it is possible for His justice to be satisfied, His majesty vindicated and His authority reverenced. “God is as capable of receiving satisfaction as injury” (577).

6. Desirability of the Atonement. God will incline to the satisfaction of His justice. He alone is infinitely worthy of His own love and esteem. If He loves Himself, then He must hate all opposition to His person. Therefore, He “will be disposed to repair the injury done to his honor” (577).

Mutiny in the church...

(Tim, w/thanks to Steve M.) Read this post by Carl Trueman. It's almost excellent.

Almost because, sadly, the salient point to make about it is that there are no specifics mentioned, no men and their errors exposed. Sadly, that neglect says more than the good words Trueman has written.

To warn against theological and ecclesiastical and confessional and Biblical rebellion without warning against any particular man is to gnaw with gums instead of chewing with teeth. Until you name names, it's only one more hypothetical construct.

It wouldn't surprise me if reformation 21 had a policy against questioning or warning against any particular man's faith or practice--particularly if that man sells lots of books and is cited more than anyone else by Reformed pastors, today.