This mistake is the result of confusing the session interview with St. Peter’s interview at the Pearlies. It demands of preschoolers that they show their high school diploma as a condition for admittance into preschool. It confuses the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end. It muddles baptism and the eschaton. It reverses the order of the Great Commission — teach them obedience to all that the Lord commanded, and then bring them in. It is theological dyslexia.
I just can’t wrap my mind around the position being critiqued there. Even reading the original author’s defense of it, and being willing to concede some things, it still leaves me going, “Huh? So all churches are equal, but some churches are more equal than others? They concede that can belong to Jesus, but still not belong to THEM?” I suppose the only conclusion is that they don’t think the visible church is the imperfect embodiment of the invisible church, but something else entirely. Is that it?
I think one thing going on is the assumption that somehow we can allow you to be “in the church” without conceding that you belong in a “truly proper church.” Even leaving some of the disturbing aspects of that logic aside, if the only part of the church you actually have control over is your own congregation, what sense does it make to concede that a person can somehow be “in the church” if you aren’t willing to let him into the only part of it you control? Just leave it for the Gentiles to take care of, and hope he has the good sense to go find the right set?
I can’t figure out how you combine such a high ecclesiology with the idea that you can leave some of the sheep out in the cold if they don’t meet all the standards and just hope they’ll make it into the fold somehow or other, but it’s not your problem how.