Interesting stuff going on. A pastor does a bang-up job defending Schenck and also really pointing out the shift that is taking place in Christian thinking (both Reformed and otherwise) that roughly corresponds to the shift from Des Cartes to Wittgenstein (the later).

Here is a challenge for you: name one relationship that you have that is not “external.” Other than masturbation, there is no such thing (and that sin itself involves remembering or imagining external realities one has learned about). Relationships are with other people and involve communication from outside ourselves. Thus, we are saved by hearing a message preached or reading a printed word with our eyes or being immersed in a new life that originates from “the external world.”

Of course, whether one responds in faith to this message from outside is dependent on the sovereign work of the Spirit. It would be perfectly possible for two identical twins to respond differently to the grace of God manifested in Church and Gospel. But that doesn’t change the fact that we live and breathe and have our being in externals. The only true sign of that saving work of the Spirit is to be found in whether or not one will embrace and live in the grace communicated externally.

I realize the metaphor of “inward” and “outward” to point out the need for sincerityand to warn against hypcritical fakery is a useful metaphor that is used in the Bible. But it has somehow been blended with a modern metaphysic that isn’t supportable from Scripture.

The fact is various people have been butting up against the modernist cage of ontological individualism for years (note: finding a word for tendencies is a dangerous and vague affair. There are good and bad things to say about various forms of “individualism.” Sorry for the lack of precision). One of the major pioneers in this regard, was John Williamson Nevin, of whom D. G. Heart has just written an excellent study: John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist. Of course, being a pioneer, no doubt Nevin traveled down some false trails. Indeed sometimes he seems to out-do anyone else in invoking the external/internal dichotomy. Still, he was greatly helpful both in recoverint the Reformers and the Patristics and in critiquing the philosophical milieu of his day.

I could add to the bibliography but that will need to wait for some other day. The other conversation is at the Boar’s Head Tavern about baptism, paedo v. credo. Oooh. Never have I so wished I was a member. Non-reformed credobaptists and paedobaptists are all uniting against the Reformed for not acknowledging a univocal definition of “saved.” Whether one rejects or accepts “once saved always saved” is the key to whether one should be a paedobaptist or a credobaptist.

What would I say if I had their ear? “Brothers and sisters are you really going to hold your Bible in one hand and insist on a univocal technical meaning for “salvation” and its derivatives on the other?”

Actually, that is just an afterthought. The real thing that struck me was in response to the treatment of the Reformed tradition as some sort of strange anomaly within the Christian heritage as a whole. I seem to remember that Calvin was not the only one to unite double predestination and a sovereign gift of the Spirit guarranteeing final salvation for the elect alone with a baptismal gift that was objective and real. Is it really that surprising that there are still a few Augustinians in the world?

Oh well, it is still an interesting conversation, especially the material from Kierkegaard.