But if you haven’t read this post and the comments yet, nothing I can say here will be adequate to describe what it reveals. If you care at all about North American Reformedom, you will need to deal this this.
But if you haven’t read this post and the comments yet, nothing I can say here will be adequate to describe what it reveals. If you care at all about North American Reformedom, you will need to deal this this.
Mark, the sky isn’t falling.
No, the sky isn’t falling. But the godly integrity of North American Reformedom may be.
Thank you Dr. Hart.
When you were at Auburn Avenue I was amazed at how you presented yourself. I told everyone who asked that you had a thousand opportunities to “theonomist-bait” or whatever (i.e. try to portray the opposition according the worst possible light–I’ll leave aside the question of whether this light would be prejudice or accurate or to what extent both). No. You “took on” the intergration of faith and learning, Kuyper, and just about every Reformed notable one could name except for John Calvin and (the American version of?) the Westminster Confession. I wasn’t convinced that either of these gives you any justification for your position but I was impressed at how you limited yourself. I’ve been in those sorts of debates and always encountered a far different (re)vision of mainstream Reformed theology and history.
So, in almost every way you acted like the impartial scholar I had encountered in reading your book on John Williamson Nevin.
I started this reply intending to compare the above with the comments you wrote on that blog post, but I can’t bring myself to say more, and have no idea how to say anything without sounding even more apocalyptic. Readers will have to decide for themselves.
But you’re right that apocalypticism is not appropriate. We’re just talking about the OPC and, even if we were talking about all of NAPARC, nothing so microscopic in Christendom could possibly count as the sky falling. More like a crack in the dome of the Truman Show.
Mark, please refer to me as Darryl if you like. I’m sorry to have disappointed you.
But why have you taken this so personally. I worked for 7 years at the school founded my Machen and didn’t hear much good about the man. It didn’t cause me to go mental, nor ask the board for a formal apology.
It’s a fallen world and we have to live with people who disagree all the time. Why do you seem to be surprised by that?
“But why have you taken this so personally. I worked for 7 years at the school founded my Machen and didn’t hear much good about the man. It didn’t cause me to go mental, nor ask the board for a formal apology.”
Well, I love Machen and don’t know what anyone’s beef with him could have been. I sort of wonder how you might have reacted if misinformation was spread about Machen in a campaign to drive you out of a job… but that gets excessively hypothetical.
When I disengage you’re pastoral advice about getting some emotional distance from all this from your defense of it, it does appeal to me. Or I’m tired. In any case, I’ll take your advice.
“It’s a fallen world and we have to live with people who disagree all the time. Why do you seem to be surprised by that?”
I think the particulars of the case make it clear, but I’ve got nothing new to say about it and don’t want to repeat myself still another time.
Take care.