New Warhorn Media post by Aaron Prelock:
2 Likes
I know we like to complain about the weaknesses of today’s church, but there’s something else involved, which you hint at. If we work from the rule that every Christian truth is accompanied by two equal and opposite errors …
My Exhibit A in this respect is the Church of Scotland. Historically it was good at preaching fire and brimstone, and then more fire and more brimstone. But the other aspects (=mercy & grace), which Bullinger notes, it more or less ignored. This had the end-effect, from what I can see, of inoculating generations of Scots against the Gospel - and then the reaction of the church to this situation, when they realised what was happening, proceeded to overshoot in the other direction.
Getting this right is a tough call.
Yeah, the very real history of Hypercalvinism developing out of a morbid obsession with fighting Arminianism (in Scottish Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and English Baptist circles) should warn us against over correcting.
This is why historical theology can be so helpful. These dangers were there for our forefathers. We can learn from both their successes and their failures.
Because of the near total lack of truth in our day, my tendency is to give grace a miss till we can recover the truth. Then we can work on truth and grace. This is wrong for two reasons: 1) we’re not the only faithful men in Israel today, and 2) we especially need to emphasise grace so it can be seen in its true form rather than its cheap imitation.
4 Likes