Romans922
Puritan Board Professor
Ken, you wrote:
"But, what you have said is like saying 'Well, I like the Nicene Creed, I guess. I find myself closer to it than other creeds. But I really don't see why it's necessary.'"
But I haven't said anything like this.
I actually consider the Reformed confessions the purest expressions of the Christian faith around. Hopefully you don't still think that I've "denigrated" them.
Berny,
Sorry if the response was heated.
Just take it from those of us who have been through seminaries (and I am not a hidebound type, I don't think). The problem with seminaries is that they are academic in the bad sense --that is, too many profs think the seminary exists for the sake of the academy.
They forget that the seminary serves the church, and primarily the pulpit.
Thus, confessional fidelity is a sine qua non, is it not? Again, the confessions aren't Scripture --the WCF could probably be improved upon at certain points (more for clarity and consistency than anything else). The point is, it's not up to individuals to alter confessions. It is not up to seminary profs, no matter how learned they are. It is up to presbyters meeting, and struggling, and debating, and, most of all, praying.
The reason we have so much discord in the PCA currently is, at least in part, because we have everyone just doing what is right in his own eyes, and no-one reverencing the communion of the saints as the primary key for finding out the mind of Christ in the Scriptures.
We need the church!
Here endeth the sermon
Andrew, if you even hint at going to another presbytery to get ordained, I will hunt you down like a dog.
I don't want to go to another presbytery.