Where have all the Presbyterians gone?

This is a thoughtful post by Bill Evans from his blog the Ecclesial Calvinist.

A while back my friend Anthony Bradley posted an insightful and provocative blog piece asking why the popular influence of conservative Presbyterians prominent a few decades back (e.g., Jim Boice, R. C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson, and John Frame) seems to have waned in comparison to Baptists of a broadly Reformed soteriological persuasion.  I posted an extended comment at the time, and thought I would expand on it here. 

There are at least two big issues in play—the Baptistic Reformed success as driven by institutions (e.g., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Founders’ Movement) and gifted individuals (e.g., Don Carson, Al Mohler, Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll) on the one hand, and the apparent Presbyterian decline on the other. As a Presbyterian I’m not particularly well equipped to comment on the first, but I think I have something to offer about the second. 

Of course, the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition has been declining as a percentage of the American population since the nineteenth century.  But statistics available in resources like ARDA and the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches indicate that some of the NAPARC denominations are plateaued or in decline.  This is worrisome, and the reasons are doubtless complex, having to do with social as well as theological factors.  Below are five general observations from the “for what it’s worth department.”

Read the rest of the post here.

Young Child Communion & the Westminster Standards

On Interviews & Testimonies, Part V

Continued from Part IV

Q. Doesn't admitting young children violate the Westminster Standards?  Shouldn't we only admit mature believers who can understand what is happening at the Table?

Is young child communion consistent with the Westminster Standards?  Yes, I believe so.  First, consider the Westminster Confession of Faith (hereafter WCF).  No mention is made (wisely) of ages or intellectual capacity in either chapter 14 “On Saving Faith” or chapter 15 “Of Repentance unto Life.”  Furthermore, paragraph 3 of chapter 14 shows that the Westminster divines were sensitive to the fact that mature faith ought not to be made the criteria for genuine faith since saving faith “is different in degrees, weak or strong, may be often and many ways assailed and weakened, but gets the victory; growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith.”  Surely it would be wrong to insist that a young covenant child give evidence of a mature faith before we count them as a genuine believer!  Genuine faith may be present in covenant children, not having as yet grown up into “the attainment of a full assurance through Christ.”  Why should such faith—weak and immature as it may be—serve as a barrier to the covenant child’s participation in the Lord’s communion meal?

The mention of assurance ought to remind us of another statement in the Confession which teaches that lack of the conviction of the assurance of faith is not necessarily evidence of the absence of saving faith.  The Confession does indeed hold out to us the goal of attaining full assurance since those believers who “truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may in this life be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace” (18.1), but the divines are also quick to remind us that “This infallible assurance does not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it” (18.3).

Indulgences are back!

Unbelievable.

Corporate Election

An oldie, but goodie. From the beginning of Donald Macleod's chapter on "Christ's Kirk" in A Faith to Live By: Christian Teaching that Makes a Difference (Mentor, 1988), pp. 222-23:

There is a sustained emphasis in both the Old and New Testaments on this corporate dimension of Christianity. We in the Reformed churches need to listen to this particularly carefully because the Reformation brought in a marked individualism. The conversion of the individual soul, individual converse with God in prayer, and the cultivation of our own individual spirituality are all necessary emphases. But we over-reacted to the corporatism of mediaeval Christianity and now need to balance our emphasis on the individual with a due stress on the importance of the community.

One example of the way we instinctively apply individually what the Bible almost certainly intended to be applied corporately is Paul’s well-known directive to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). It is virtually certain from the context that Paul was thinking not of the individuals at Philippi but of the corporate well-being of the congregation there. Things were being done from envy and jealousy. Paul concludes his discussion of the issue by asking them to work out their own salvation. The word salvation is used here in its general sense of health or well-being, reminding us of the importance of attending not simply to our own individual spiritual needs but also to the well-being of the churches and congregations of which we are a part.

Just Who Are the Truly Reformed?

This is a great article by Steven Wedgeworth. Make sure you read the entire thing.

The Bible & Tradition

Why should there be such hostility against my comment that we seem to “have lost the ability to critique and correct our tradition when the Bible calls for it.” The Scriptures do indeed call for us to guard against our tradition taking the place of God’s Word. I learned that in Sunday school. Jesus teaches this in his interaction with the Pharisees (Matt. 15).

Is our precious Reformed tradition above criticism? I believe it is part of our tradition to be suspicious of tradition, and maybe more importantly, to never rely on our tradition to adjudicate theological and ecclesiastical controversies. But that’s all we seem to want to do these days.

We don’t read this in WCF 1.8: “The Reformed tradition being immediately inspired by God, and, by his singular care and providence, kept pure since the Reformation, is therefore authentic; so as, in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal unto it.”

Nor do we find this in WCF 1.9: “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the the Reformed tradition: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), only the Reformed tradition can provide the answer.”

And this is not what WCF 1.10 says: “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Reformed tradition.”

Follow the debate over at De Regno Christi, if you want (or if you can).