Just wanted to say I so appreciate what you’ve said here, and I’m certainly in agreement with you. As @bencarmack surmised, my concerns lie in a slightly different direction.
What is needed is not Puritan, but Reformation history. Anabaptists have always been resistant to civil authority in a way other Protestants haven’t. This is foundational to historic anabaptism. We may want to say it doesn’t continue today, but it’s always struck me as more a matter of degree than fact. And yes, there’s less of this anti-civil authority in most Baptists today than there was at the time of the Reformation, which is the reason when Presbyterians say we shouldn’t cooperate with credo-baptists today citing Luther and Calvin’s intense opposition to them, I remind them that Baptists aren’t mounting a pitchfork revolution today—so their citation of Luther and Calvin is a bit of an anachronism. But then Covid came along and maybe proved me wrong?
Here are the primary sources:
Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)
Chapter 20 Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience
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The liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law; and in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin, from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation; as also in their free access to God, and their yielding obedience unto him, not out of slavish fear, but a child-like love and willing mind. All which were common also to believers under the law; but under the New Testament the liberty of Christians is further enlarged in their freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law, to which the Jewish Church was subjected; and in greater boldness of access to the throne of grace, and in fuller communications of the free Spirit of God, than believers under the law did ordinarily partake of.
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God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.
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They who, upon pretense of Christian liberty, do practice any sin, or cherish any lust, do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty; which is, that, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.
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And because the power which God hath ordained, and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another; they who, upon pretense of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God. And for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such practices, as are contrary to the light of nature, or to the known principles of Christianity, whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation; or to the power of godliness; or such erroneous opinions or practices as, either in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them, are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath established in the Church; they may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the Church, and by the power of the Civil Magistrate.
Batist Confession of Faith (1689)
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Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience
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The liberty which Christ has purchased for believers under the Gospel, lies in their freedom from the guilt of sin and the condemning wrath of God, from the rigours and curse of the law, and in their deliverance from this present evil world, from bondage to Satan, from dominion of sin, from the harm of afflictions, from the fear and sting of death, from the victory of the grave, and from everlasting damnation. - This liberty is also seen in their free access to God, and their ability to yield obedience to Him not out of slavish fear, but with childlike love and willing minds. All these freedoms were also experienced in substance by true believers under the Old Testament law, but for New Testament Christians this liberty is further enlarged, for they have freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law to which the Jewish church was subjected. They also have greater boldness of access to the throne of grace and fuller communications of the free Spirit of God than believers under the law normally experienced.
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God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from all doctrines and commandments of men which are in any respect contrary to His Word, or not contained in it. Thus to believe such doctrines or to obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience. The requiring of an implicit faith, an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.
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They who on pretence of Christian liberty practice any sin, or cherish any sinful lust, pervert the main purpose of the grace of the Gospel to their own destruction. They completely destroy the object of Christian liberty, which is that we, being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our lives.
Presbyterian Preliminary Principles (1789; Presbyteran Synod of New York and Philadelphia)
Paragraph I
That “God alone is Lord of the conscience; and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship:” Therefore, they consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal, and unalienable: they do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power, further than may be necessary for protection and security,
and, at the same time, equal and common to all others.
Paragraph II
That, in perfect consistency with the above principle of common right, every Christian church, or union or association of particular churches, is entitled to declare the terms of admission to its communion, and the qualifications of its ministers and members, as well as the whole system of its internal government which Christ hath appointed: that, in the exercise of this right, they may, notwithstanding, err, in making the terms of communion either too lax or too narrow: yet, even in this case, they do not infringe upon the liberty, or the rights, of others, but only make an improper use of their own.
These Preliminary Principles are the foundational document of American Presbyterianism and demonstrate Presbyterian, as opposed to Baptist, continuity with the Reformers on matters of submission to civil authorities and the freedom of church authorities on conscience matters within the church. Love,
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This is somewhat tangential to the topic, but what is the history of the interaction between English-speaking Baptists and continental Anabaptists? It’s my general impression that the two traditions don’t have a lot in common or even much cross-pollination in terms of ideas or personalities, but this thread is making me question that. Any reading on the topic that anyone can recommend?
I have known some Canadian Mennonites and they didn’t strike me as much of anything like American Baptists.
Brother I am trying to get Baptists to become more Presbyterian, and I’m happy to admit it! Please know I am very much in agreement with what you’ve written here. The very existence of the two London Baptist Confessions (1644 and 1689) should be proof that Reformed Baptists had a very different understanding of independency than what passes as current today both among reformed and non-reformed Baptists. So I’m approaching these questions from the same perspective, though I will quibble a bit over interpretation.
Now to the promised argument…
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It is inaccurate historically and theologically to link British Reformed (1644/1689) Baptists with British or Continental Anabaptists. They did not grow out of the same soil, as Reformed Baptists continually worked to show. They explicitly argued they were entirely different from Anabaptists in 1644, and there are similar references in 1689. 1689 Article 24 explicitly affirms the goodness and the legitimacy of the authority of the civil magistrate (in contrast to Anabaptist thought at the time). Their work adapting the WCF as well as the Savoy Declaration (which they openly admitted they were modifying) for their own purposes should be ample evidence of their confessional loyalties. Because both Anabaptist and Reformed strains of Baptist theology have existed in the UK and the US, it is important to differentiate which we are talking about when we reference ‘Baptists.’ 1689 Baptists simply are not anabaptists. We should also note that there were widely varying types of Anabaptists then as now, all the way from the 'pitchfork revolutionaries’ referenced above (and frequently in that context completely heretical) to the much tamer and usually reasonably theologically unproblematic varieties afterwards (which led to the pacifist strains we see today). The 1689 assertion that civil government is a legitimate occupation for the Christian should be reason enough to show that 1689 Baptists are not and have never been Anabaptists. They are two entirely different streams of theology whose only similarity is credobaptism.
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That the 1689 left as much of the WCF on civil authority and conscience, as it did, especially considering it wasn’t crafted in the luxury of Westminster Abbey with the best of English and Scottish academic theology (to say nothing of continental Reformed influences!) at its disposal should be noteworthy. 1689 modified many portions of the WCF, not just the articles on civil authority and conscience. Their affirmations on the articles on civil authority and the conscience are broadly the same as the WCF, even if they may not be as robust as the WCF. Please note I am not minimising the importance of the work of the Westminster Assembly - 1689 was self-consciously linking themselves to the theology of the Assembly. But I think the remarkable difference in context between 1645 and 1689 urges us to look at the LBC with a degree of charity. By the 1680s it was remarkably clear that the sort of civil authority the Westminster Assembly envisaged simply wasn’t going to happen in Britain. For 1689 to leave as much of the articles on conscience and civil authority that they did, especially in light of their suffering under the state church between 1660 and 1689, shows a deep commitment to those principles.
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Which brings me to another important point, one that I think the emphasis on the 1789 Presbyterian Preliminary Principles highlights. 1689 LBC and 1789 PPP are closer together than 1789 PPP and 1645 WCF on one key issue: both deny a state church. 1689 removes the whole of section 4 of WCF 20, ‘Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience,’ but 1789 PPP removes the final phrase of section 4, ‘and by the power of the Civil Magistrate.’ That is an incredibly significant point, and it’s the reason the SD and 1689 removed section 4 from that article. Paragraph II of 1789 is a massive shift from the original intention behind the Westminster Assembly. The Assembly was called to set up a blueprint for a national church. As Sam Waldron points out in his exposition of 1689, Baptists in the 1640s had legitimate reason to fear that Westminster Presbyterians would use the authority of the state of suppress even Reformed Baptist theology and practice, as Restoration Anglicans did against everyone who disagreed with them after 1660. It is important to recognises that unlike 1645, 1689 was written in the aftermath of nonconformity being a crime. And 1689 Baptists never had the state on their side in their work of crafting a confession. Again, that is not to minimise the accomplishments of the Westminster Assembly. But I think we can read their slight modifications on conscience and government charitably in light of the three decades prior to 1689 (especially since 1789 PPP will go on to remove some of the state church assertions that were originally in WCF).
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As to the phrase ‘in matters of faith and worship,’ the Savoy Declaration adjusted that article in 1658 from 'and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship’ to 'and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or not contained in it.’ 1689 simply follows the SD’s lead. It’s a clarification not a change in meaning. I saw a modernised version of WCF that uses virtually the same language as SD and 1689 to explain what WCF means. We can quibble about the exact intended meaning of the words, but I think the points that all three confessions were trying to make was broadly the same. WCF 20, SD 21, and 1689 21 are all dealing not with the relationship of Christian conscience to state authorities but the relationship of Christian conscience to religious authority which commands something contrary to or beside (i.e. not contained in) God’s Word. To argue that the removal of this phrase was a removal of a ‘limit on individual conscience’ makes no sense in light of the rest of the article. The whole article is dealing with ‘matters of faith and worship’! I am all for dealing with sins of omission in our theological understanding (especially from a Baptist perspective), but I think the charge levied over this phrase is simply not accurate. Which brings me to my final point (anyone still reading?).
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Some of the loudest agitators against civil authority today come from within confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian circles (CREC, PCA, OPC), those who have vowed submission to WCF 20 and 23! Yes the Apologia crowd are quite vocal (that’s par for the course), but other Reformed Baptists such as the 9Marks crowd (though admittedly not 1689) have been remarkably (dare I say culpably?) compliant throughout Covid. The John MacArthur crowd has been distinctly subdued and even principled in its rhetoric compared to Moscow or Apologia. Maybe I’ve missed them, but have ARBCA or FIRE made public pronouncements attempting to subvert the civil authority? Where is the idea that somehow 1689 Baptists are fuelling revolution and rebellion? From my perspective, though not all adherents of WCF agree with what’s going on, it is still adherents of WCF responsible for much of the fiery and divisive rhetoric! To argue there is some latent Baptist tendency responsible for this division seems unnecessary. Just say they’re inconsistent with their own confessional standards.
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All this points me to see personality rather then confessional standards as responsible for the current state of discussion between reformed churches on this subject. As @tbbayly mentioned above, that’s much as it was in the English Civil Wars. Moscow may have come out of Baptist roots, and they may have done so insufficiently. Maybe in their neophyte syndrome they see themselves as the final authority on what it means to be ‘Truly Reformed.’ I don’t know. But I do know of Presbyterians and Baptists and Independents and Anglicans and Lutherans and all sorts of others who are all divided over the same issues we’re divided over here. Yes, our views on the limitation of conscience and our view of the civil authority have a big part to play, but there is divergence on those views even from within the same confessional structure. It may have more to do with a cultural mindset, as @JBrown pointed out. Knowing our confessions (along with their strong points and deficiencies) will help us tremendously, but I don’t think we’re going to find the solution by taking a magnifying glass to the historical confessions.
There. No idea if that’s helpful or not. But I think if we start looking at polity or even confession as responsible for the current malaise, we’re going to get distracted. It may even be that our confessions and the contexts in which they were produced actually help us call both ourselves and one another to repentance in these rebellious times.
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I find this discussion interesting especially as I got added to a group on fb that has a bunch of Anglicans who make the similar arguments towards Presbyterians as is made toward anabaptists. They argue there is a rebellious and divisive streak among Presbyterians.
We are all down stream from a lot of things since the reformation including the Puritan and separatist movements, enlightenment writing, common sense realism as in Locke’s two treatise on government, the American Revolution, the civil war, liberal fundamentalist controversy, sexual Revolution , and industrial and tech revolution.
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Dear Aaron,
I can’t wrap my mind around discounting or dismissing the loss of these words, “in faith and practice” from the Westminster Standards. Sure, it has a historical context, but there you have it. The words are missing and it matters very much still today. “In matters of faith and worship” say the Presbyterians in discussion of conscience, and the Baptists leave it out. And if you think about it, in the shadow of the Reformation, it makes perfect sense. Battles are remembered for a very long time and the rejection of authority of the Anabaptists at the time of the Reformation has been notable among Baptists today across my lifetime—from the state right down to the local independent congregation and its polity.
Many times I’ve said to my dear brother on our pastoral team at TRC who is a lifelong baptist (but has recently become padeobaptist in his sacramentology) that Baptists can’t seem to get away from their commitment to the purity of the Church. Now he disagrees with me on that, but we keep at it with each other and I think I see it still today even and especially in the expectation for perfection on the part of our civil magistrates. Now I know they won’t agree, but what do you say about a group of people standing in the long line of the three strands of the Reformation who say whatever God has not forbidden by Scripture is permitted in worship, those who say whatever is not commanded by Scripture is forbidden in worship, and those who say the Lutherans and Calvinists were compromisers and refused to purify the Church all the way as it should be.
We can easily see the Lutherans still being Lutheran; we can still see the Calvinists being Calvinists; and I at least think I can still see the anabaptists being anabaptists. To this day Baptists refuse to submit to any church authority, for instance. Is that just a church thing or is it deep in the DNA?
Mind you, I’m not saying Baptists today are Anabaptists. That’s an easy one to answer, just as I wouldn’t have bothered writing Church Reformed if I thought Presbyterians today are Calvinists. And just as, having read a lot of Luther, I wouldn’t say Lutherans today are Lutherans. We all move on from our fathers in ways good and bad, and nevertheless, I have seen a continuity in Lutherans, Calvinists, and Baptists that makes me recognize them from Reformation times.
Presbyterians and Lutherans are more accepting of authority, and Baptists less so. From the ground up. Less able to get along with each other, even, although that’s saying something pretty dicey which many would disagree with vehemently.
Let me note that across my now-long lifetime, there has been a family resemblance to Baptists in their relationship to accountability in the church, leadership in the church, and relationship to the state. As I see it, the Covid agitators today bear a Baptist family resemblance to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, which was Baptist through and through. And as my Dad had no love for them then, I have no love for them now. For years, they have struck me as both superficial and perfectionistic (two defects often dependent on each other). And I don’t think the movement among them today toward theonomy and post-mil is accidental. They know how taxes should be done Biblically. How rulers should rule Biblically. What steps should be taken and what steps not taken by civil authorities concerning Covid. Make no mistake about that!
Pastor Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority crowd were sure the country was going to Hell in a hand basket because the Supreme Court removed prayer from schools. Think carefully about that. They didn’t like my Dad because he said he was against school prayer because he didn’t want public school teachers leading his children in prayer, but then he was Presbyterian, wasn’t he?
I recognize Jerry Falwell’s superficial perfectionism today among those former-Baptists now claiming Reformed doctrine who have made rejection of civil authorities’ public health measures the new test of patriotism and true Biblical faith. Sure, we can be atomistic about the last five centuries and say this is that and the other is not based upon this day when masks were required in this state and that municipality and that day when OSHA began enforcing vaccines by decree of our president, but I have kept asking myself why our former-Baptist Reformed agitators have, from the very beginning of Covid, argued that to be asked to wear a mask in church is not only pagan sacramentalism and idolatry, but binding men’s conscriences?
My own answer is these men stand in a long line of men who removed the statement in both the Westminster Standards and American’ Presbyterianism’s Preliminary Principles, “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.”
Yes, American Presbyterians have not wanted (theonomy’s) theocracy; there is that. But we’re talking about what is and what is not the proper limit of civil authority’s Covid mandates, and from the begining the former Baptists now working to become Reformed can’t quite stop the feeling very deep within them that no one should be telling them what to do ever about anything, and least of all masks. Thus the Southern Baptist Assembly. Thus church independency.
And, I at least think, thus theonomy. I keep telling my fellow TRC pastor mentioned above whom I dearly love that the damn-the-masks post-mil former baptist reformed theonomists have the wonderful position of never having to govern anyone at all because they have given themselves to perfectionism. They broadcast their perfectionism from their mics and pulpits and that’s that! They’ve made a great show of their own conscience and demand other people not limit their conscience to matters of faith and worship either. And they make up about one-thousandth of one percent of our electorate here in the United States. But hey, they’re pristine in their conscience—and you should be too if you are REALLY REALLY a Christian. I refer to it regularly, this society of almost-Presbyterians with their infinite number of rules and morals and boundaries and lists and explanations of what goes there and what goes here and who exactly has no right to tell them what to do, as “the secret life of Walter Mitty.”
The point isn’t reform. It’s perfectionism. But never mind, they have no converts other than the young men in other reformed men’s churches who hear them denounce their pastors and think that must mean their pastor is a coward and doesn’t trust God.
So sorry to give this personal analysis. Still, I do agree with much of your recounting of history. Yet I can’t get it out of my mind that it really does matter that Baptists going back to Anabaptists have had an adversarial relationship to authorities civil and ecclesiastical from the very beginning. As they see it, God Alone is Lord of the conscience FULL STOP. And I respond, “which means that you alone are Lord of your conscience.” Lotsa love,
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Seems like the question to ask is why did the Congregationalists make the original changes to Westminster?
And I’m sure there’s another FB group of Romans calling Anglicans divisive and authority haters.
That movement as far as I can tell was started by Presbyterians. The war for independence was largely encouraged by Presbyterians. It seems to me that Presbyterians don’t bark as loud as Baptists but are the ones who do the ground work of keeping the civil government in check. My years are not as many as yours, so I may be missing something. But when the Presbys hold a session and decide enough is enough, it’s game time.
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That thought terrifies me. May God keep us from building ministries based on our own personalities and even biases rather than on Christ’s work and devotion to his bride.
John Owen was one of the architects of Savoy. When two Quaker women were wandering Oxford topless as a testimony of the Holy Spirit against the dead formalism of the religious establishment in Oxford, Owen had them whipped and ejected from the town. I think it’s fair to say Owen wouldn’t support the universal authority of individual conscience in today’s Reformed churches. He went toe to toe with the Quakers repeatedly in his writings, and one their big problems he was addressing was the autonomy of the believer’s relationship with the Holy Spirit - not identical to but very related to this conscience discussion.
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Wilson names Warhorn’s statement here.
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Pastor Wilson also writes in there that “It is a sin to go into slavery willingly.”
We don’t live in a slave society, but this is hardly true in a slave society. There are all sorts of reasons one might become a slave. This text came to mind immediately: “5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.”
Scripture also repeatedly talks about willingly selling daughters into slavery. What is striking about this statement is that it doesn’t seem to jive with what else I’ve read of him on slavery. Perhaps he slipped.
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I’d be very happy if Presbyterians would become more Presbyterian.
A couple days ago I attended the stated meeting of our local presbytery. For those unfamiliar with the polity, it is a meeting for all the local teaching elders (TEs), aka ministers of Word and Sacrament, and up to two ruling elders (REs) from each local church. At this meeting, multiple pastors rose up to complain that the presbytery meetings were not times of rich fellowship and encouragement that the TEs desired and needed but were instead filled with business. The fault was laid at the current set of bylaws, which were said to be too bureaucratically constraining. How exactly this was so was never made clear to me aside from one example in that the bylaws specified that presbytery meetings were to be held on Saturdays, which meant the TEs didn’t have the freedom to schedule them at a more convenient time, such as Wednesday mornings.
I am very proud to say that my pastor took the floor to declare that the problem was not the bylaws but rather the lack of faithfulness of the TEs, for which they all (including himself) should repent. And as an example of lack of faithfulness, he pointed out that in prior meetings, many TEs left during the lunch break rather than stay for the afternoon session. And despite this direct rebuke, attendance of the afternoon session of the current meeting was noticeably smaller, and only one third of the men who started the meeting stayed until the end of the meeting.
I came to the realization that a large number of the TEs viewed the presbytery meeting as interfering with the work of the church rather than being the work of the church. For example, it was in the afternoon session that candidates for ministry were examined and pastoral calls were assessed. One might think this sort of oversight was an essential feature of Presbyterianism, but for a large number of TEs, it was just a bother. They’d rather hang out with fellow pastors over a beer.
Additionally, I perceived that the reason that presbytery meetings were so grinding was that the presbytery was deeply divided on substantial issues that kept arising over and over again because they were never directly faced and dealt with. Instead, the majority of TEs seemed to wish to maintain a superficial harmony by patching over differences with half-baked compromises and bureaucratic maneuvering. One example was a call that a TE received from a non-profit organization that, upon questioning from the floor, turned out to have been founded by the TE and had no independent board (at least not yet). So the question was raised, how could it be proper for a man to essentially call himself? When the website of the non-profit was checked, it turned out to have no mention of the Bible, Jesus, or the Christian faith. So the question was raised, how could this be an appropriate call for a minister of Word and Sacrament? The website also mentioned LGBTQ+, so the TE receiving the call was asked to clarify his views with respect to the recent Revoice controversy. This last question was ruled out of order, and it was pointed out that the Administrative Committee had already looked into everything and given their blessing to the call. But no one from the Administrative Committee attended the afternoon session, so their reasoning remained unexplained. The wrangling continued for more than an hour, not as debate over the substantive issues, but rather as attempts to find some precedent or compromise that would justify approving the call. By the time 4:30 pm rolled around, everyone was exhausted, so this matter, along with several others, was kicked back to the Administrative Committee.
Actually, I should have said, the Administrative Commission. Over the objections of several older TEs (including my pastor and a seminary professor) and several knowledgeable and experienced REs (including myself), a coalition of younger TEs managed to push through a wholesale replacement of the bylaws with a substantially truncated set that created an Administrative Commission largely appointed by the Moderator, and as a commission rather than a committee, it will have the power to make decisions rather than merely recommendations. Although the new bylaws state that this power is “not intended to be used for controversial matters”, would you trust that? It will now be easier for the young Turks to avoid inconvenient questions and opposition from the old guard minority, and if the presbytery meeting time is switched to Wednesday mornings, the REs will be sidelined. But with decision-making taken away from the presbytery as a whole, the middle mass of TEs will be rewarded for their support with more time for fellowship in the pub.
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Got a little queasy reading this, remembering my days in the PCA.
Indeed.
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Man, so much in that post by Pastor Wilson.
The excommunication scenario stands out. Denouncing the Mass and her transubstantiation, translating the Scriptures into vulgar tongue, getting married, preaching salvation by faith alone…all reasons our forefathers were excommunicated. Resisting a circumstance of worship over which the elders have authority?
So, Wilson has moved some. His message has moved from leave your churches to force them to excommunicate you.
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Douglas Wilson ceased being interesting when he started epitomizing the stance of regardless freedom, freedom exercised with little or no regard for others. From the linked article:
Regardless freedom, of course, is exemplified by (what I must hope is) the rare belief that being required to wear a face covering in public spaces is a grievous assault on one’s liberty. It assumes that my liberty of action must not be constrained by any consideration beyond the realization of my own desires and my own self-interest narrowly conceived.
Not only does this miss the purpose of freedom, which should not be an end in itself but used as a means to glorify God, it also short-circuits any meaningful debate about the moral and political dimensions of the present crisis. If you believe Wilson, it’s all a power grab and there’s nothing to be learned other than yet another confirmation of how wicked our enemies are.
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I’ve often thought over the past year and half that a lot of Moscow is doing is a power grab… the pot calling the kettle black. They’re staking their claim in the reformed world and working to peel people out of their churches. They may not be trying to do this but it has been the fruit of their work. I’m still dealing with it in my own church.
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Their regular nod to Warhorn confuses me. They seem to respect the Evangel crew, or at the very least desire to appear to respect them. Why show that deference (or the appearance of it), if you believe their position is fundamentally at odds with your own?
Doug said ‘this is a good statement’ about a statement that argues the exact opposite of what he was saying in his post. I don’t get it.
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“I would rather die than accept masks as a condition for coming into the presence of God (2 Cor. 3:18).”
Wilson makes masks a top-tier gospel issue, up there with the solas of the Reformation. Death rather than approaching God incidentally masked.
Yet, he encourages near infants to approach Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Table with nothing more than a pat of the tummy as a profession of faith.
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I’m glad I didn’t finish reading this thing. It just gets worse and worse as you go.
I know that he read it because I sent it to him and Toby. They both appreciated it.
You men keep misrepresenting Doug’s argument. Doug said he would rather die than have masks as condition” of coming into worship. He’s saying he would rather die than to make masks mandatory for worshiping the Lord. It’s not masks per say he’s opposed to but the mandating of them in worship he’s opposed to.