A Quick Defense of Abolition from the Westminster Standards
I have recently been reading a good bit of 19th- century American Presbyterian history. Many Presbyterian ministers in both the Antebellum and Post-War South defended the institution of American slavery. Prominent Southern theologian Robert Dabney defended his church’s position by asserting that the Westminster Confession and Catechisms were silent on the issue, so it would be inappropriate for the church to take a definite stand on the rightness or wrongness of slavery. This is incorrect. While neither the WCF and WLC explicitly state, “Slavery is right/wrong,” they both contain several doctrinal points which should have led Antebellum Presbyterians to condemn the institution of chattel slavery as sinful.
First, WLC 142 states that the 8th Commandment forbids “man-stealing…
On Faith and Being Grafted Into Christ
Heidelberg Catechism 20
Q. Are all people then saved through Christ
just as they were lost through Adam?
A. No.
Only those are saved
who through true faith
are grafted into Christ
and receive all his benefits.
One of the interesting subtleties of the catechism is how it describes salvation. It is not actually faith that saves; faith is the mechanism by which salvation comes, but does not save in itself. Salvation comes from being grafted into Christ. Union with Christ is the essence of salvation and the fundamental distinguishing feature of the Christian.
To be lost in Adam is to be separated from God. To be saved in Jesus is greater than being found my him – it is to be joined to him…
On the Salvation of Infants Dying in Infancy
The EPC prides itself on allowing differences in “non-essentials” among its churches, and this has included the thorny issue of the eternal fate of people who die in infancy.
The Westminster Confession of Faith states,
Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.
The Confession strikes an agnostic position that borders on a tautology: elect infants dying in infancy are the ones who are saved. This position allows for a great deal of flexibility, since the who and how of election for those incapable of being outwardly called is not identified.
In 1903 the PCUSA added a declaratory statement to the beginning of the WCF which functionally amended it. The declaration stated, in part, that,
…with reference to Chapter 10, Section 3, of the Confession of Faith, that it is not to be regarded as teaching that any who die in infancy are lost. We believe that all dying in infancy are included in the election of grace, and are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where and how he pleases.
This declaration had the effect of eliminating flexibility from confessional subscription. Now only one position, namely that all who die in infancy are elect, was permitted. The EPC formed in 1981, and had to choose which amendments and alterations to the Westminster Standards it should adopt. The Declaratory Statement was one of the items considered…
In Defense of Traditional Seminary Education
R. Scott Clark comments on the Distributed Education (DE) seminary model, which instead of having students come to a campus sends the professors to the students. It is primarily a response Tim Keller’s suggestion that the current seminary model is now inadequate and a different approach is needed.
Until parishioners are prepared to see physicians or surgeons who earned their medical degrees online, they should not accept ministers who have only an online degree. There is a reason why we send physicians to brick and mortar schools, because we know from experience that to do otherwise is to cut corners and we are not prepared to do that with our physical health. Why then are we willing to consider training the physicians of our souls with less care?…
Students traveled to them for a reason: education is not a consumer product that can be distributed by Amazon. Education is a process. It is a culture. It is a habit that is formed in community. It takes time in a community of scholars…Distributed education seeks to disconnect the outcome of education from the process: initiation into a culture and the formation of habits. It assumes that education is what happens when a prof travels to a church and delivers lectures thereby transmitting information. That is not itself education. The lecture is only a beginning of education for the student. Lectures are clues to a world of learning but they are rudiments, bread crumbs that invite the curious to continue learning.
Clark’s whole post is worth reading, and there are a few points I think are worth adding.
The first is that DE disconnects students from other students. The community aspect of education is not just student-to-professor, but peer-to-peer…
On the Herodians in the Gospel of Mark
Reading each of the gospels as a single story can be helpful in drawing out information. For instance, Mark 3:6 says that the Pharisees plotted along with the Herodians to destroy Jesus. The Herodians are introduced here as a new player, another antagonist against Christ. But they only show up again in Mark 12:3, the discourse about paying taxes to Caesar (the only other time they are mentioned in scripture at all is Matthew’s parallel to this account).
Herod and his allies do not have a prominent role in Mark, unlike in Luke where Jesus stands in trial before Herod. It would be easy to treat the alliance between the Pharisees and the Herodians as a minor detail, or only about the desperate pragmatism of the Pharisees. Yet the Herodians occupy an important place in Mark…
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