JohnV
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
There have been a few subjects on the Board lately that have gotten me to thinking in general about things. I knew web conversations when they were still a new idea, when the WWW was a new and wondrous world to explore. I was only a local Bulletin Board subscriber, not on the I-net, but I was still contributing to a degree to discussion forums on the Net. A friend would send me to latest dialogue, and I would respond, send it to him, and he would list it on the forum for me. Back then, though, anyone who could spew words more than five letters long was a theologian or a philosopher.
We have come a long ways since then. We still have our internet theologians, but there is a maturing that has taken place that allows us to check sources, and to look for stuff of real substance.
I think that the Puritan Board has been a leader in the field when it comes to responsible exchanges. It has been an example to others in how discussion is to be approached. It started that way from the opening posts, and has impressed many.
But the tendency to be an internet theologian is a strong urge. This has played right into the hand of some movements. The thread on Kinism shows that there are websites that find a justification for just about anything, even while claiming to hold to the orthodoxy of Reformation theology. Maybe there hasn't been a maturing in relation to acting and talking more grown up, but just in making it more to look like it, but still being just as immature.
That is what got me to thinking about how cyber conversations have grown, and yet also not grown. If we want to be an example to the internet forums of what a discussion board ought to look like and do, what is the next step?
For me it has to be a clearer personal responsibility in differentiating between doctrinal truth that is uncompromisable for all and doctrinal views that perhaps we should entertain some second thoughts on. We can be personally sure about some things, but we need to come to grips with the fact that we're not likely the first to think those things, and that the Church has not inscribed it as acknowledged doctrinal teaching. We are making what seem to us to be logical and perhaps even necessary deductions, yet if they were so then the Church would have made the same logical or necessary deductions long ago. And she didn't.
So we need to have a perspective about such things, keeping a respectable distance between things that we believe because it makes sense to us and things that we believe because the Church has taught it to us, the Spirit working through the Word and the offices as He said He would.
To quite a degree we have already done this. There are, for example, Exclusive Psalmodist on this Board; and they believe it to be right, and therefore that including hymns in formal worship is wrong. It is only consistent to think this way about one's belief about this. But yet these brothers have not at all held it against those who believe that hymns may and perhaps even must be included in formal worship. It is also consistent to these people that if the command to sing "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs" is a command, then it is a command, not just a suggestion.
So here are two views that are exclusive of each other, yet are not cause for division. It is taken in perspective. That's because there is no clear command either one way or the other. And certainly we were not the first to think the way we do, historically speaking. So we mind our P's and Q's about such things, and discuss with respect to each other, but especially to the Spirit who teaches us.
Well, this holds true for a lot of things. If we are going to be bound by a common confession, then let that be what binds us. Let us not make things that go beyond that confession to be what is our bond, or moreso what divides us because we will not be bound them.
The Confessions listed as necessary for membership on this Board have a common commitment to a Reformed Covenantal overview. By that we mean that these Confessions teach not their own views, but teach the Bible. They are, in fact, Biblical. They are not perspectival.
That to me is the difference. And I think it represents the next hurdle for us to get over, if we are going to again take a place of leadership on the internet discussion process.
We have come a long ways since then. We still have our internet theologians, but there is a maturing that has taken place that allows us to check sources, and to look for stuff of real substance.
I think that the Puritan Board has been a leader in the field when it comes to responsible exchanges. It has been an example to others in how discussion is to be approached. It started that way from the opening posts, and has impressed many.
But the tendency to be an internet theologian is a strong urge. This has played right into the hand of some movements. The thread on Kinism shows that there are websites that find a justification for just about anything, even while claiming to hold to the orthodoxy of Reformation theology. Maybe there hasn't been a maturing in relation to acting and talking more grown up, but just in making it more to look like it, but still being just as immature.
That is what got me to thinking about how cyber conversations have grown, and yet also not grown. If we want to be an example to the internet forums of what a discussion board ought to look like and do, what is the next step?
For me it has to be a clearer personal responsibility in differentiating between doctrinal truth that is uncompromisable for all and doctrinal views that perhaps we should entertain some second thoughts on. We can be personally sure about some things, but we need to come to grips with the fact that we're not likely the first to think those things, and that the Church has not inscribed it as acknowledged doctrinal teaching. We are making what seem to us to be logical and perhaps even necessary deductions, yet if they were so then the Church would have made the same logical or necessary deductions long ago. And she didn't.
So we need to have a perspective about such things, keeping a respectable distance between things that we believe because it makes sense to us and things that we believe because the Church has taught it to us, the Spirit working through the Word and the offices as He said He would.
To quite a degree we have already done this. There are, for example, Exclusive Psalmodist on this Board; and they believe it to be right, and therefore that including hymns in formal worship is wrong. It is only consistent to think this way about one's belief about this. But yet these brothers have not at all held it against those who believe that hymns may and perhaps even must be included in formal worship. It is also consistent to these people that if the command to sing "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs" is a command, then it is a command, not just a suggestion.
So here are two views that are exclusive of each other, yet are not cause for division. It is taken in perspective. That's because there is no clear command either one way or the other. And certainly we were not the first to think the way we do, historically speaking. So we mind our P's and Q's about such things, and discuss with respect to each other, but especially to the Spirit who teaches us.
Well, this holds true for a lot of things. If we are going to be bound by a common confession, then let that be what binds us. Let us not make things that go beyond that confession to be what is our bond, or moreso what divides us because we will not be bound them.
The Confessions listed as necessary for membership on this Board have a common commitment to a Reformed Covenantal overview. By that we mean that these Confessions teach not their own views, but teach the Bible. They are, in fact, Biblical. They are not perspectival.
That to me is the difference. And I think it represents the next hurdle for us to get over, if we are going to again take a place of leadership on the internet discussion process.
