Thin Skinned

Vantilians are great at dishing it out, but collapse like the rusted floorboards on a ‘66 Peugeot as soon as you exert even the slightest pressure. Recent case in point is Lane Keister who showed me the hole in the floor for criticizing Vantilian historian John Muether. Lane wrote:

. . . this last comment is over the top. John Muether is an extremely well-respected historian. He is a librarian and professor of church history at RTS Orlando. He knew Van Til personally, and knows many people who knew Van Til as well. The only reason people are attacking you is that you are attacking them, making this whole issue a central issue of the Gospel. You are banned from this blog temporarily, and maybe permanently. I don’t mind debate one bit, and you have contributed much good iron-sharpening debate. But unless you can control your temper and your words to be polite, I can’t have you on this blog. It grieves me no end to have to do this. But people who would otherwise comment are not interested in commenting because you are so harsh.

What were my comments that were “over the top,” ill tempered, impolite, and just a downright nasty abusive ad hominem attack against OPC historian and librarian Muether and deserving of Lane stuffing my head through the floorboards? I wrote:

Meuther is an untrustworthy historian and I’ve already been over some of the revisionism now being advanced by Vantillians to somehow remove Van Til’s name from the heart of the controversy. The myth of Van Til continues.

Hunting Wolves

I’m told that a wolf will gnaw its own foot off to escape a steel trap and Lane Keister has laid a nice trap in his recent post on the Joint Federal Vision Profession (JFVP). Keister begins by drawing his prey in by expressing his frustration with the men of the Federal Vision, a frustration shared by many PCA elders trying to deal with these men within their own Presbyteries:

I have found the FV to be an extremely moving target. The minute one has a logical argument against a position that has been written down, I am told that that isn’t their position. It was their position just a minute before, when what we had was written documentation. However, what always seems to happen is that I am told that I am a dolt, an irresponsible nincompoop, who cannot even understand plain English. Of course, not everyone in the FV camp has been doing this to me (Wilson being an example, though he doesn’t think I have proven one single aspect of any FV thinker’s theology to be out of bounds).

Anyone dealing with the any of these FV men will immediately sympathize with the Lane’s frustration. Trying to nail down any of these men on any one point of doctrine is like trying to wrestle a greased pig. They will concede no ground and just when you think you have them cornered, they slip right out from under you. Even the PCA’s FV/NPP can’t nail down even one of these men as they all claim miraculously “not to see themselves” in any of the nine declarations of the PCA’s report, and, to a man, they all claim to be both confessional and biblical. Poster boys for orthodoxy. Doug Wilson was even so bold to assert, “I must not be FV at all because I do not hold to the positions they condemned.”

The Evisceration of the Christian Faith

In light of an ongoing discussion on the connection between Vantilianism and the rise of the heresies entailed in the Federal Vision over at Lane Keister’s Greenbaggins blog, I decided to post a piece I wrote for The Trinity Review here. This article can also be found at The Trinity Foundation website where you can find additional information on the relationship between the babel and incoherence of Vantilianism to the false gospel of the Federal Vision. One of the central missions of the The Trinity Foundation has been to arm ordinary Christians with the intellectual ammo they need to oppose and expose the nonsense being foisted on the church all in the name of Christ. They deserve your support.

– Sean Gerety

One of the central doctrines of the Reformation and the Christian faith is the principle of sola Scriptura – Scripture alone. It is in this principle that all other Biblical doctrines find their source, legitimacy, and warrant. It is the underlying axiom of the Christian faith. Not surprisingly, and as one would expect, any alteration in this foundational doctrine will affect every other doctrine which may be logically drawn from this one inerrant and infallible source. Throughout history this critical doctrine has been the focus of attack for the simple reason that if the foundation can be broken, it is only a matter of time before the whole structure will fall. Even the redundancy, “inerrant and infallible,” is evidence of an earlier attack on the doctrine of Scripture by Liberals and Neo-orthodox who sought an “infallible” word from God in what they believed to be an erring book. Yet, today, among those calling themselves Reformed, there has been an even more deadly and pervasive attack on the truth of Scripture that has left men impotent to defend the Gospel. This movement has attempted to divorce the statements of Scripture from their logical and necessary implications.

Scripture and Logic

The principle of sola Scriptura is often misunderstood as being restricted to the explicit statements of Scripture; any implication that might be drawn from them tends to be regarded with suspicion. Logical deductions from Scripture are often derided as the products of “mere human logic,” the underlying assumption being that man’s logic is one thing, and God’s logic, whatever that might be, is, well, another. Of course, those who defend such a view never actually explain what God’s logic is or how we can tell one logic from the other, yet they couch their misology in pious language. Human logic, they say, while of some limited value, must be “curbed.” That was not the position of the theologians at the Westminster Assembly who asserted both the sufficiency and rationality of Scripture: “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men” [emphasis added].

America’s Future

Someone sent this to me yesterday and it sums up the future we face. I guess the question is, how did we get here?  And, for those tempted to say “nyuk, nyuk, nyuk,” the joke is on us. Now there’s a poke in the eye.