It is hard to remember, when one reads this response, that Thornwell and Charles Hodge were members of the same church and respected one another, even as they disagreed at points, as Christians and as teachers.

I don’t get it. Schenck’s book has been highly recommended by many including Dr. Robert Rayburn of Faith Presbyterian Church. It is not some marginal book suddenly coming from outside mainstream presbyterianism, but has always been there. Granted, from the Reformers, to the Puritans to the Presbyterians there have been many other things in the mix. But why suddenly insist that only one flavor is permitted?

My own opinion is that there is no way anyone can deny a startling shift in the way Christian children during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries involving virtually every Protestant denomination, one that expanded Baptists and shrunk the Presbyterians. The drastic drop of baptisms in Presbyterian Church, and even more in American Puritan (Congregationalist) Churches is a matter of public record. Whatever the heritage he may have been extending, on the practical issues of revising the Book of Church Order regarding membership, I have never seen any response to Schenck’s thesis that Thornwell was the innovator and Charles Hodge the defender of the historic practices. Accusations about motives are no substitute for engagement with the text.

It seems to me that recent suggestions that the Bible mandates we should restore the historical practice of paedocommunion are driving some to place the Presbyterian mainstream much closer to the Baptist heritage. Everyone is moving and shifting the heritage but not everyone is aware of it. That would explain to me why some Presbyterians sound like Kierkegaard.

I repeat: Thornwell and Hodge respected one another. I have always been in presbyteries which expected a wide diversity within the boundaries of the Reformed Faith. I think in our present circumstances especially, nothing else makes sense.

I should point out that I too dislike “presumptive” regeneration. But the fact that children grow up to show themselves and the world that they are unregenerate is no different than the problem of older professing believers who later show themselves and the world that they are unregenerate. By this reasoning, no one should ever be regarded as a Christian (an option some consistent “calvinists” have insisted upon).