David

The Father of Modern Day Hypothetical Universalism.
I cannot say everything all at once all the time, but damn it, I'll try my hardest to do just that for you.

[David @David651975]

Having a conversation on social media is like two physicists trying to map out a mathematical formula on beach sand while the tide is rolling in.
So can we try for irenic substance instead of thinly disguised hate in our ephemeral and conversational back and forth?

[Elisa Mosini 🇪🇺🇮🇹 @MosiniElisa]

Macron: “Without Europeans, Canadians, Japanese and Australians, there would be no support for Ukraine. There is no more US support.”

Finally, a European leader is saying out loud what needs to be said.

The US has abandoned Ukraine and the free world.

🇪🇺🇺🇦🇬🇧🇨🇦🇯🇵🇭🇲

[David @David651975]

Keith is on fire today:

[Keith Plummer @XianMind]

Contempt has been known to create a kind of illiteracy.

[David @David651975]

I am listening to John Denver now. Galypso. He was so good. Gotta play it loud tho.

[Keith Plummer @XianMind]

The benefits of obedience extend far beyond merely avoiding punishment. Maturity realizes this.

[David @David651975]

Ignore the awful word salad from the news host. Listen to her for 5 seconds and then skip forward to the father. What the father says, is what we all know to be right:

[Acyn @Acyn]

Scott Colom’s father: In victory you want to not be critical of other people. Cindy Hyde-Smith is a person who's been in service many years, and she's our competitor, but she's not our enemy. Scott's going to be her senator and her neighbor's senator, and he's not going to offer any criticism of her….

[David @David651975]

@DrInquisitivus I wonder what our theology would look like if had removed merit language and merit categories entirely?

[David @David651975]

Appendix. Query 8.

Mr. Baxter, though he had made the marriage consent to Christ, as King and Lord, the formal act of justifying faith, as being an epitome of all Gospel obedience, including and binding to all the duties of the married state, and so giving right to all the privileges: and had thereby, as well as by his other dangerous notions about justification, and other points connected therewith, scattered through his works, corrupted the fountain, and endangered the faith of many; yet, after all, came to be of another mind, and had the humility to tell the world so much; for Mr. Cross informs us (Serm. on Rom. iv. 2. p. 148,) that Mr, Baxter, in his little book against Dr. Crisp's errors, says, "I formerly believed the formal nature of faith to lie in consent; but now I recant it. I believe," says he, "it lies in trust: this makes the right to lie in the object; for it is, I depend on Christ as the matter or merit of my pardon, my life, my crown, my glory." [p344.] [This is quite a ways into the query. I posted better citation details the other day.]

I'd kinda would like to read that by Baxter, but he's too hard to read. 🫣😳 I have made a note of it and perhaps will get back to it if remember.

Any of our Baxterians want to verify or falsify that for me?

Thanks.

[David @David651975]

Short Version:
We are what we Read.

Long version:
Reading Puritan literature again has given me flashbacks. Owen made derogatory comments about his opponents. Calvin would speak of the farm animals <my paraphrase as I cannot recall which animal specifically> at the back of his church. Luther treated Erasmus as barrel scum. And on and on, we have all read stuff like that. People died, were burnt at the stake, drowned, hung because they disagreed with the gate-keepers. Extreme I know, but the same spirit of warfare lingers. Just read some of the Christian explicit subject threads here on X.

Spurgeon once held up the 1689 and said that the theology within it is the Gospel. So many Calvinists have repeated that sentiment regarding the 5points, they are the Gospel. So that meant, non-Calvinists must have a false gospel, no gospel, or perhaps they have the gospel in spite of themselves. I've met people in Australia who denied that other Calvinists were saved cos they differed on such and such point. And again, I know that's extreme, but it all flows from the same combative spirit.

That perpetual war footing and seeing others as enemies, is like a communicable Covid virus. I saw this same spirit of warfare at RTS from certain professors: the smugness and condescension and the coded jokes and the Christian swear words to scare away free and curious investigation.

You read your heroes, your white hats, and they beat up your enemies, the black hats, you cheer along. That spiritual sentiment and demeanour outflows in your thinking about those who disagree with you in the present. We employ sarcasm, insults, and ad hominems as easy as breathing. And we do it with a purpose.

It has it's parallel in social media. The medium and the anonymity of it rewires your brain giving you a permission structure to express abuse and bullying. We treat people on social media in ways that we would deem appalling if someone treated us the same way face to face.

Gutenberg's printing press back then was the equivalent to our social media today. You could print off a words, flame your enemy, send off the book, and never see the negative consequences of what you have written.

Anger and perpetual war-footing is exhausting. It closes out curiosity and honesty. Conversation becomes about saving face, self-vindication. And those of us who watch it all play out, cheer, cos the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I know that can only be the specific reason so many justified James White and Steve Hayes' constant abuse of other people, who themselves had no bully pulpit to fight back from.

[David @David651975]

Cross on 'Ongoing Justification':

In others we need but one act [of justification], because we can abstain from: the like crimes; but in this we need a Continual Justification or Remission: Hence we daily pray, forgive us our Sins; and we have daily encouragement, That if any an sin there is an Advocate with the Father: The Court constantly fits, we are always on our knees before the bar, our faith perpetually pleads, and Christ’s always interceding, and he is always heard; hence a constant continued Stream of Justification, Dan. 9: 9, called forgiveness; and Revel. 19:9. the righteousness or justifications, for it is the same word; dikaiomata, Rom, 5.19, is translated justification, and thus may be expounded, Revel. 22:16. He that is justified, let him be justified still; and in this very Chapter, Rom. 4. Abraham is said to be justified by acts of faith several Years after his first Conversion, Gen. 15.6. it was at least Ten Years after His first Faith. Our Case is a continued State of Justifying or Pardoning. Walter Cross, An Exposition of the Second Verse of the Fourth Chapter of Romans (London: Printed by J.A., 1694) 32. [I did a quick clean up as I always do.]

'Dem's fighting words.

This guy does not like Baxter. Next page he rails against Baxter's Grotian errors. That's where I stopped.

[David @David651975]

It's everywhere. The entire edifice (hyperbole) is virtually built on one verse. And it is ubiquitously present as the cornerstone of the argument. And the tragedy is that the verse has been misread and mistranslated for centuries, but yet has spawned an entire theology that misses the point. If you’ve been reading some of my posts you will know my context for saying this:

Cross:

[T]he Work of the Law, Signifies the Office of the Law; this was to Convince a Man of Sin, that he might fly to Christ, as Galat. 3., T’is called a *School-master* to bring us to Christ: The Law is the Mean, He is the End. The Moral Law was a Mean to make them *sensible* of their Need of Christ, and the Ceremonial was a Mean to represent him as the Ends of the other, as One who was a Sacrifice, and gave satisfaction for their: Breach of the Law.
Walter Cross, An Exposition of the Second Verse of the Fourth Chapter of Romans (London: Printed by J.A., 1694) 40.

That is not how Paul is using paidagogos in that verse.

[Asterisks for emphasis is mine.]

[David @David651975]

@DrInquisitivus I am reading him now. These guys are always in "war" mode. The white hats vs the black hats. That is so exhausting. I think that's why both wars of religion came about, and why Puritanism failed socially. It was just societally exhausting.

[David @David651975]

@DrInquisitivus Thanks too. I am looking at that guy now.

[David @David651975]

@iuczrio That is amazing. Thanks Nick. Trust has to be a part of faith. Trust takes us beyond intellectual assent to actual faith. Thanks again.

[David @David651975]

And immediately following:

He [Rutherford] calls it a light of arguing and of heavenly logic, by which we know that we know God, by the light of faith, because we keep his commandments. "In effect," says he, "we know rather the person must be justified, in whom these gracious evidences are, by hearsay report or consequence, than that we know or see justification, or faith itself, in abstracto; but the light of faith, the testimony of the Spirit by the operation of free grace, will cause us, as it were, with our eyes, to see justification and faith, not by report, but as we see the sun-light." Appendix 345.

The guys are allowing room for the reflex act of faith, and the direct witness of the Spirit, as a bases for assurance as well. They did not see it as a simple binary.

[David @David651975]

Some more:

There are two things further, concerning this persuasion of faith, that would be adverted to: one is, that it is not axiomatical, but real; that is, the sinner has not always, at his first closing with Christ, nor afterwards, such a clear, steady, and full persuasion that Christ is his, that his sins are forgiven, and he eventually shall be saved, as that he dare profess the same to others, or even positively assert it within himself; yet upon the first saving manifestation of Christ to him, such a persuasion and humble confidence is begotten, as is real and believing, and particular as to himself and his own salvation, and which works a proportionable hope as to the issue; though, through the humbling impressions he has of himself and his own guilt at the time, the awe of God's majesty, justice, and holiness on his spirit, and his indistinct knowledge of the doctrine of the Gospel, with the grounds and warrants of believing therein contained, he fears to express it directly and particularly of himself. The other is, that whatever is said of the habit, actings, strength, weakness, and intermittings of the exercise of saving faith, the same is to be said of this persuasion in all points. From all which it is evident, the doubts, fears, and darkness, so frequently to be found in true believers, can very well consist with this persuasion in the same subject; for though these may be, and often are in the believer, yet they are not of his faith, which in its nature and exercise is as opposite to them as light is to darkness, the flesh to the Spirit; which though they be in the same subject, yet are contrary the one to the other. Gal. v. 17. [Appendix, p., 344.]

[David @David651975]

Appendix. Query 8.

Mr. Baxter, though he had made the marriage consent to Christ, as King and Lord, the formal act of justifying faith, as being an epitome of all Gospel obedience, including and binding to all the duties of the married state, and so giving right to all the privileges: and had thereby, as well as by his other dangerous notions about justification, and other points connected therewith, scattered through his works, corrupted the fountain, and endangered the faith of many; yet, after all, came to be of another mind, and had the humility to tell the world so much; for Mr. Cross informs us (Serm. on Rom. iv. 2. p. 148,) that Mr, Baxter, in his little book against Dr. Crisp's errors, says, "I formerly believed the formal nature of faith to lie in consent; but now I recant it. I believe," says he, "it lies in trust: this makes the right to lie in the object; for it is, I depend on Christ as the matter or merit of my pardon, my life, my crown, my glory." [p344.] [This is quite a ways into the query. I posted better citation details the other day.]

I'd kinda would like to read that by Baxter, but he's too hard to read. 🫣😳 I have made a note of it and perhaps will get back to it if remember.

Any of our Baxterians want to verify or falsify that for me?

Thanks.

[David @David651975]

Something I thought of the other day when I was talking with JJA. I cant recall the exact context. It was Gordon Clark on faith. He made this really good point that assurance--I think it was assurance--is not the essence of faith, but it is essential to faith. It might have been something else, but either way, its very good point.

I don't know what book that was from. He was writing about the example of a chair. I see a chair in the room and I have confidence that it will hold me. I trust it will hold me. I know it's more complicated than that, but was in that context I think.

The above comment from the Appendix brought back Clark's comment again tonight.

[David @David651975]

Did you see my reply to your other post PB? I proffered some verses. I did ask questions I admit. I didn't actually rely on a HU guy. I mean, I did mention Calvin but for historical purposes. When making historical claims to orthodoxy, historical sources are important.

Right now I am just replying with verses.

For example: what's is going on in Roms 2:4 and Acts 17:26-27?

[David @David651975]

@Ken_FiveSolas That is not even new. See, Anthony Hoekema: The Bible and the Future. That discussion has been on decades. William Hendriksen: Israel in prophecy.

[David @David651975]

@DININTELNETWORK I am sure God, the Pope, the whole world of Catholics, even all the Protestants in the world are totally shocked by this news. It has to be devastating their minds right now. How will they all cope?

[David @David651975]

@_TheoMed @CelticBaptist You know well how I feel about abuse. You should have been more sensitive. Sheesh.

[David @David651975]

I bet ya didn’t know this about me. I'm actually "conflict averse." Strange right?