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| Clear Thinking | | Date Created: Nov 18, 2004, 02:08 PM |
We confessional Presbyterians have have a difficult time avoiding the very error we excoriate the Catholics for--traditionalism. This is expecially true when it comes to talking about what the Bible says about our salvation. Try to suggest that tradtional terms and categories might need recasting and watch out (witness the conflagration over the AAPC conference). Thinking about this reminded me of a few foundational books. Here's my challenge to you, reader. If you are engaged in any way in this debate about election, baptism, regeneration, and salvation but have not read the following books, then don't say or write another word until you read them. Here are the two books: Vern Poythress's Symphonic Theology and John Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God . When you're finished reading, you can talk and write about the debate.
The issue of theological language is huge. Unfortunately, venerated ecclesiastical documents, especially the Westminster Standards, have bequeathed to us the idea that theology is about defining terms ("Justification is. . ." "Sanctification is. . ."). As a result conservative Reformed churches usually work with an incredibly wooden understanding of the function of theological and biblical language. We do theology by sloganeering. And what's worse, we read the Bible as if the definitions we have attached to our theological vocabulary must be dumped into every biblical occurrence of these same words. So "Son of God" must refer to Jesus' divinity. "Justification" to the imputation of Christ's alien righteousness. "Sanctification" to the process of growing in holiness. "Regeneration" to an invisible event in the soul of man. And so on. If you suggest a different "meaning" for any of these words or phrases, you are obviously departing from the faith. Never mind that it seems that these words don't seem to have these precise meanings in many biblical passages.
That is why every theological student must read Vern Poythress's Symphonic Theology and John Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. I can almost guarantee you that Moorecraft and his crew either haven't read these books or they despise them. Their terminological definitions are their security blankets. It keeps everything nice and manageable. Above all they must protect the system of doctrine, which effectively means the definitions that they have assigned to these words.
I have a paper that illustrates this problem by examining Romans 1:4, where Paul declares that Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead." You can download the paper as a PDF file from this page. It's the first one listed. |
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