rom Us:
We live in a time when more and more evangelical Christian leaders are leaving the evangelical Protestant faith for the various forms of Greek, Eastern, and Roman Orthodoxy. We have therefore devoted this issue to this general subject. We should begin by saying that this was certainly not done as a provocation to members of these other faiths. Rather, it is an attempt to equip professing Protestants who are ignorant of their theological heritage, and who therefore are hard-pressed when asked where their church was before the Reformation. Because the theological poverty of modern evangelicalism is obvious to just about everyone, it is a question that is being asked more and more frequently.
You will have noticed that our quotations, front and back, are all from early church fathers. This was not done because we grant the authority of the fathers over our faith; we hold fully to the biblical requirement of sola Scriptura. Rather, we wanted to show that the early fathers are by no means a consistent voice in support of Orthodoxy -- Orthodox appeals to the fathers notwithstanding. Our current controversies over these issues such as the idolatry of image worship are not new. The fact that Orthodoxy can make a "plausible" appeal to the "uniform" voice of the fathers is simply one more monument to the modern evangelical detachment from, and ignorance of, the history of Christ's church.
Nevertheless, this next point cannot be made often enough. Our involvement in this debate is not an expression of bigotry or malice toward those who disagree with us here. We wish them the best -- believing that the best cannot be separated from gracious salvation appropriated by faith alone.
We want to welcome those new readers who were recommended to us by Antithesis. With these new readers, we regret that Antithesis has ceased publication, but we also want to make sure we thank them for recommending us to their readers, and for setting such a high standard for the rest of us in alternative Christian publishing.
Errata: Speaking of high standards, the bigger Credenda gets, the bigger this section gets. Oh, well. 1. Last issue, there was a typo in Wes Callihan's Ode to a Great Library. An inadvertant insertion of the word ever into the second line turned that line into iambic pentameter instead of iambic tetrameter. We really put our foot in it, so to speak. 2. We also forgot to include our source on George Gillespie in the footnotes. He was a Scottish Presbyterian of the 17th century, and the essay on heresy was taken from the The Works of George Gillespie recently republished by Still Waters Revival Books. 3. And we are breaking new ground here with an advance erratum. As soon as we figure out how to make proper quotation marks on our new software, we will begin doing so.
From You
I appreciate your "no-holds barred" approach to telling us what God should have us believe, and a clear, truthful, not watered-down, easy-to-swallow interpretation of the Gospel.
Thanks for sending me Credenda/Agenda. I want you to know that I think it is one of the best written and best organized newsletters I've ever seen. Many that I receive regularly are little more than vehicles for showing off their publisher's latest wares. They are sloppily written, typically purvey wild views not well tested by Scripture and observation, and contain a hodge-podge of disorganized information. Credenda/Agenda is the opposite of all these things. I commend you and your staff.
Greetings from Edinburgh, the centre of the Scottish Reformation . . . This is simply the best popular publication I have seen in years, and I have seen many in the last twenty years.
Volume 4/No. 2 was excellent with the exception of two articles.
Douglas Wilson seems to have a fixation on the word "abdication." I am a firm advocate of the home headship of the husband, but 40 years of preaching and counseling has dispelled any notion I held of the possibility of laying all the home problems at the feet of a vacant "throne." . . . I have also learned that debt is more often caused by a spendthrift husband than an undisciplined wife . . .We need to rid ourselves of the idea that all wives are simple, stupid, incompetent and greedy, while husbands are all wise and selfless.
Ex Libris. Douglas Wilson:
I could not believe my eyes, and had to read the passage three times to make sure it was not quoted in derision: "Now we know from Scripture (Rom. 11) that Judaism will be grafted back into the olive tree of true Israel . . . the true Church." We most certainly do not know that. Some believing Jews may be grafted in, but Judaism? Never! Despise the blood of Christ by restoring animal sacrifices? . . . Mr. Wilson has a right to his unorthodox and aberrant views of eschatology, but let him represent them as his own not ours.
Wilson replies:
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to cease using the word "abdication" -- which will happen when I stop seeing so much of it. Your point about spendthrift husbands is a very good one, and a good topic for a future Husbandry column. But what is such self-centered spending? It is yet another form of abdication.
Concerning the grafting of the Jews back into Israel: Your point again is a good one, but is directed against a position I do not
hold -- I regret not making myself more clear. Of course there will never be a return to the animal sacrifices
(contra dispensationalism). My point was that
multitudes of Jews will believe in the risen Christ -- so many that apostate Judaism will be no more, and Jewry (Judaism) will
have become Christian. There is only one Israel of God -- the Christian church. This is not an aberrant eschatology; it is an off-the-rack
covenantal postmillenialism.
