Well Done Phil Johnson!

This is a repost but something we should all be reminded of:

 

I loved reading Phil Johnson’s response to a comment at his Pyromaniacs blog site who wrote…

Your identity as a “Baptist”; your endless quotations from Charles Spurgeon; your faithful devotion to John MacArthur; and especially your willingness to call yourself a “Calvinist” are all huge red flags that tell me something is seriously wrong with your theology. Why do you teach a system of doctrine that is named after a mere man? Why are you following human teachers instead of going to the Bible alone? After all, 1 John 2:27 says, “The anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you.” We ought to go to Scripture alone to establish our doctrine! The truth is in God’s Holy word, not in any theological system or theology textbook developed by mere men. Isn’t that principle what the Reformation was originally about? Sola Scriptura? Didn’t even Calvin himself go to Scripture for the truth instead of reading other men? I believe that if Calvin himself wrote for this blog, he would point people to the truth in God’s Holy word, not to a theology developed by some other man.

Phil’s reply: You have seriously misunderstood sola Scriptura if you really imagine that it rules out human teachers or eliminates systematic theology. The Reformers (including Calvin) often cited the works of Augustine, Tertullian, Jerome, Cyprian, Ambrose, and others-ranging from the early church fathers through Aquinas. They didn’t follow any of them slavishly, of course, but they certainly took them seriously. Not one of the major Reformers would have tolerated the claim that because the Church Fathers were mere men they were therefore irrelevant or incapable of shedding any helpful light on tough theological questions.   Continue at John Samson

Revisiting Baptism and Young Children

I’ve considered this question before. As Baptists, when should we baptize our children? A few blog posts recently give reasons why we should or should not delay baptism until our children are more mature (apx. ages 10-12).

First, Trevin Wax gave 4 points on his position relating to this question (which is that we should delay baptizing children until they are around 10 years old or so).

John Starke at The Gospel Coalition Blog then gave 4 reasons why we should baptize small children.

On the heels of these posts, Mike Gilbart-Smith at 9 Marks Blog posted his own “9 reasons why we should not baptize young children“. Keep Reading>>>

Fellowship Redefined: David Cloud, Mark Dever and the Fundamentalist Notion of “Partnership”

David Cloud has out done himself. As king of the fundamentalist “dirt alert” squad, Cloud recently declared that the original fundamentalists were all wrong. They cared about the fundamentals of the faith, as something to rally around and unite over. They actually stood by the age-old maxim: “In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity.” Imagine that! Boy were they duped. There is no such thing as a non-essential, don’t you know. Rom. 14 and Matt. 23:23 not withstanding.

Cloud has an article entitled “In Essentials Unity”, where he quotes disapprovingly many wise comments from other fundamentalists, like Charles Keen and Clayton Reed, who are waking up to the fact that standing with a brother for the gospel doesn’t imply a wholesale endorsement of every single doctrinal position he may espouse. In fact we can appreciate the contributions of those who differ with us on less important points. Cloud however disagrees, saying, “I challenge anyone to show me where the Scripture encourages the believer to treat some doctrine as ‘non-essential’ or to ‘stand for the cardinal truths and downplay the peripherals’.” Read it all HERE