“Those who hold to a traditional Protestant view of justification consistently should not find a redemptive transformationist position attractive. As some of the Reformers grasped, a two-kingdoms doctrine is a proper companion to a Protestant doctrine of justification.”
via Creed Code Cult: Sola Fide and “Kingdom Work”.
Get that? Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield did not hold to a “traditional Protestant view of justification consistently.”
And then this lovely insinuation: “setting aside the issue of whether those who espouse a transformationist position do so in order to deny sola fide specifically or whether they just espouse it by default without much thought to the ramifications”
There never really is a bottom in this “discussion” and no matter what happens I find I have never lowered my expectations enough.
By the way, pretending anyone cares about issues, the book refers to “the first Adam, who was to perform his cultural work during a period of probation.” Probation was to last the entire time required for taking dominion over all creation? Who has ever believed this? The probationary period was to be settled before they even had children. “Be fruitful and multiply” could not possibly be for the probationary period,” unless you think generations or sinless children could not fall by their own sin (which they would be free to commit or not), but would be struck with wrath and depravity and death the moment Adam sinned even when they hadn’t.
Or is the idea that they would all suddenly sin at once?
Bizarre.
“In other words, if it would be legalistic for a pastor to tell an individual to comb his hair and tuck in his shirt so that God will accept him, is it any less legalistic to essentially say the same thing to an entire culture?”
This is what they hear when someone says a broad embrace of the gospel will have a transforming effect upon culture? That the “entire culture” has to measure up so God will “accept it?”
I won’t speculate on the source of the communication disconnect here, but if it’s this large, there’s no point in either trying to overcome it or getting frustrated over it.
It’s that old trick of making a controverted position on a secondary point of doctrine dependent upon a correct view justification, so that you can accuse your opponents of denying justification because they don’t agree with you on some other doctrine.
If J, then X
~X
Therefore, ~J
Where J is Justification and X is anything you happen to believe, even if the majority of the confessions and tradtion are against you. Case in point: Kline on the Mosaic covenant. Case in point: this nonsense.
What is actually going on is that they are obscuring the gospel and making it impossible for people to come to saving faith because they deny the need to preach repentance to the nations. How can anyone come to saving faith if they don’t know what they are being saved from? There is no sola fida if you do not know that you are a sinner. How can you know that you are a sinner if you don’t know you are breaking the law?
You tell them to repent of, you know, stuff.
*Correction – sola fide