Who with?

Excellent post from Doug Wilson

British Children Surveyed: “Poor children don’t have mobile phones.”

Who knew?

The “ecclesiastical” mantra reaches comic heights in Presbyterian circles when one hears alleged “churchmen” preach that Presbyteries are wrong to grant exceptions to their members to the Westminster Standards.

So what results? Laymen are taught that they should despise the courts of the Church acting as the Church in their office.

Truly bizarre.

Who decides what the Bible says?

Many people think the answer lies in some interpretive tradition, institution, and/or person to show us clear guidance in such a murky book.

And how do I know that I should embrace your candidate for referee?

By the time the argument is under way, you realize that the authoritative interpreter is not only necessary to clarify the Bible, but to clarify the meaning of history and tradition. Once you decide you submit your mind to whatever it tells you about history, then the historical argument for your new master will suddenly become clear.

If you would only submit to the Pope, or Reformed Tradition, or whatever in regard to its authoritative version of history, then you would see why you must submit to the same about how to interpret the Bible.

Traditionalism becomes simply another nihilism. Fideism. Belief for the sake of belief because you think the pattern you have contrived is pretty enough to sleep in.

…how did they possibly manage to interpret the Bible?

Then I should remind everyone of this great teaching about the identity of a Presbyterian.

You ever notice that a typical Church-historian type seems to be certain that the Bible is really difficult to understand an that we need the clear guidance of the period of time that just happens to be his area of study as summarized by some book he wrote?

Then you try to find out how much time they’ve spent in serious Bible study and… “Serious Bible study? What’s that? Everyone disagrees about the Bible (but no one ever disagrees about tradition because tradition is perfectly clear. Just read my dissertation and you will see it all spelled out) so there’s no real point in studying it.”

Does it ever occur to anyone that they made their choice about how they were going to view the Bible a long time ago, like when one decided on a specialty?

They don’t believe in the clarity of Scripture because they’ve always liked other vistas. The prejudice is confirmed because they have been in the grip of a confirmed prejudice from the beginning.