A perfect explaination

This was published in the Christian Renewal a bit ago. It's written by the Dean of NSA in Idaho. He has a rare mastery of the english language, packing such a precise explaination of what's happening in many churches into only few words. It certainly should help to determine which churches want to sound reformed, and which ones want to be reformed.



SELECTIVE CRITICISM...

Your "Crying Need" article (Aug. 16, p.6) and Richard Venama's uncharitable response (Sept. 27, p.7) are good reminders why purity and unity cannot be pitted against one another without disastrous consequences. Sadly, some of our Reformed denominations and congregations (like Venema's) are in deep turmoil today, not because of the Federal Vision issue, but because they claim to uphold doctrinal purity while playing fast and loose with church polity, church discipline, and Matthew 18 at the same time. Three examples: First, some of the loudest critics of the federal Vision are those who have praised of winked at their denomination's formal embrace of the faddish framework hypothesis and day-age theory of creation, views which stand in bald-faced contradiction to the Church's historic understanding of the six ordinary days of creation in Genesis 1-3. At the very moment when evolutionary theory is crumbling under its own secularist-materialist weight, these Reformed churches, pastors, and seminary leaders have found a way to accommodate it with these novel interpretations. But to mask this drift toward liberalism and to shore up their weakened "conservative" reputations, they have been the first to point fingers at others as "liberals" or "heretics" on the flimsiest of evidence. They doth protest too much. Their over-the-top vilification of the Federal Vision, offered without a fair or charitable hearing of acknowledgement of the varied perspectives amongst its advocates, mocks their self-anointing as champions of orthodoxy. Second, the means these "defender-of-the-faith" wannabes use to condemn what they claim are dangerous errors are themselves explicitly condemned by Scripture (namely, gossip, slander, judgments made without following Matthew 18, etc...). Despite their popularity, blogging and emailing gossip and slander don't miraculously transform them into biblical church discipline. Ignoring God's Word in one area to defend it in another is the height of folly and hubris. Unilaterally ignoring church polity and the rightful treatment of brothers in Christ, especially ministers of the Gospel, to save the church from some real or imagined error is itself wickedness and another form of liberalism. The ends never justify the means. Doug Wilson (who is my colleague, friend, pastor, and faithful brother in Christ) and the Federal Vision are no longer the issue. The issue today is whether our Reformed churches will act faithfully like the Body of Christ or like a bunch of hysterical vigilantes who lynch first and ask questions later. Third, Dr. Venema wrote that "your readers need to be warned" about this "devious and sectarian" movement that his congregation has "discovered the hard way spells TROUBLE." Yet when I called him several months ago and asked politely if I could discuss his concerns of clarify any matters for him, he blurted out that "we" were wrong (without specifics or the courtesy of finding out what I actually thought about anything). Before I could get another word in, he hung up the phone. I have rarely been treated so rudely. I appreciate the contributions Dr. Venema has made to the Reformed body through his long ministry. He is, by all accounts, a faithful man and pastor-elder worthy of honor. But his unwillingness to even talk to another brother in Christ about his concerns, and his willingness, instead, to air those concerns in print suggests that the turmoil in his congregation probably has more to do with how he handles people and problems internally than with any doctrinal issue. The Federal Vision has become a convenient scapegoat for many with a low view of church unity. The "trouble" in our Reformed churches is the willingness of some to run about warning that the doctrinal sky is falling, while blissfully ignoring biblical church polity, church discipline, and Matthew 18.That spells trouble, too, but in all caps,boldfaced, italics,underlined.