Jared, you are right that the Holy Spirit does not have a chapter. But the Holy Spirit is invoked almost everywhere. The same is not true of union.
via Old Life Theological Society » Blog Archive » Was Machen Wrong Not to Appeal to Union?.
This is supposed to tell us something about the Westminster Standards. It doesn’t. It tells us that Doug Wilson could not be more right or more timely when he writes,”We would be spared a lot of theological pother if we talked a lot more about true and false, and a lot less about emphases.” But then, pother seems to be the investment bubble of the church. Pray for the bust to come soon.
It doesn’t matter how many times the Westminster Confession or Catechisms say it (and what anyone as far removed chronologically from the Westminster Assembly as J. Gresham Machen wrote is even less relevant). What matters is what it actually affirms. And both the Confession and the Catechism affirm that union with Christ is how we are justified and sanctified. End of story.
God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification: nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them.
Q. 30. How doth the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ?
A. The Spirit applieth to us the redemption purchased by Christ, by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling.
Yes, there is a reason why the Spirit keeps being mentioned.
Modus ponens. Game, set, match.
Please, please, please write these things in a book and throw it in the face of the persecutors so that it can be seen what they are doing to the Reformed faith.
The story of Aslan dealing with dwarves in a hallucinatory stable comes to mind. I sometimes dream of what would happen if past Reformers were raised from the dead. But I doubt they would be believed either.
Ah, that explains the loss of your mane.