Polanus1561
Puritan Board Junior
How would the Reformed Baptist divide over this issue be resolved in an ecclesiastical way? Not asking you for an answer but just an observation. It could be resolved through journals but I don’t think the non classical theists have such an avenueI'd like to think it's possible. I'm frustrated because I have friends on both sides. I do think there is a neo-Socinian spirit in many of those who call themselves Reformed where they imagine a very shallow appeal to prooftexts and what they deem as exegesis allows them freedom to redefine classic theological tenets. Frame is an example, not so much of someone who is a thin Biblicist but someone who forges out in new metaphysical directions and often feels no compunction to stick with Catholicity.
I think the EFS and ERAS debates were a necessary wake-up call to get people to think about small-c catholic Christian ideas that many in the 20th century felt were OK to depart from as long as they were good on salvation proper. The problem, as I see it, is that it's starting to become more of a "club" to be a "classic theist" and isn't being worked out in a mature, Ecclesiastical way. It's not enough to show very broad strokes but to get to specifics of dangers. It's OK as well to acknowledge that a person is in danger of a particular trajectory without labelling them as being in a certain camp. For instance, the Socinian or anabaptist way of thinking may bear similarities to a sort of "I'll study history and arrive at my own conclusions as I read the Scripture" but since they don't always quite "fit" it's not possible to fully label someone. It seems like all conversation is stopping at this point and people are just taking sides.