The Virtue of Name-Calling

[Confessor]

The Virtue of Name-Calling

I found this interesting. I'm not too sure what to think of it though...

 

[InevitablyReformed]

I think the author has a point about separating the man and his ideas. However, I think that whenever we are righteously indignant and feel compelled to call a spade a spade, we had better not be acting in a manner so that the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.

 

[lynnie]

Um......

I just went upstairs to double check with hubby that I have the names straight here.

Hub has an audio CD by John Robbins that somebody gave him back during a discussion of the Norman Shepherd controversy. (NS was a prof at WTS who made some statements about living faith and dead faith from James, and got accused of wrong doctrine about justification, although as near as I can tell he stood on the common saying that justification is by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone). It turned into a big stink and some WTS-CA people called him a heretic and John Frame said they were stupid and he was not in heresy, and everybody in blogland seemed to jump into the discussion. At the time the WTS seminary board and faculty both voted that NS was OK, but his later writings do seem to veer towards Federal vision so we heard. But I digress.

Anyway, John Robbins claimed on his tape that Shepherd was doctrinally off (well OK, many fine Reformed people think so)- but not only Shepherd but Gaffin, Van Til, Bavinck, and Geerhardus Vos.

I can't think of anybody in the entire Reformed community I would less pay attention to than John Robbins. When you start putting down Gaffin, Van Til, Bavinck, and Vos, I can imagine you probably draw some rebuke. My personal speculative guess is that his essay about name calling is probably just trying to defend himself from the people who have criticized his name calling of very fine Reformed scholars. I would ignore him if it was me.

 

[Confessor]

Um......

I just went upstairs to double check with hubby that I have the names straight here.

Hub has an audio CD by John Robbins that somebody gave him back during a discussion of the Norman Shepherd controversy. (NS was a prof at WTS who made some statements about living faith and dead faith from James, and got accused of wrong doctrine about justification, although as near as I can tell he stood on the common saying that justification is by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone). It turned into a big stink and some WTS-CA people called him a heretic and John Frame said they were stupid and he was not in heresy, and everybody in blogland seemed to jump into the discussion. At the time the WTS seminary board and faculty both voted that NS was OK, but his later writings do seem to veer towards Federal vision so we heard. But I digress.

Anyway, John Robbins claimed on his tape that Shepherd was doctrinally off (well OK, many fine Reformed people think so)- but not only Shepherd but Gaffin, Van Til, Bavinck, and Geerhardus Vos.

I can't think of anybody in the entire Reformed community I would less pay attention to than John Robbins. When you start putting down Gaffin, Van Til, Bavinck, and Vos, I can imagine you probably draw some rebuke. My personal speculative guess is that his essay about name calling is probably just trying to defend himself from the people who have criticized his name calling of very fine Reformed scholars. I would ignore him if it was me.

I know that Robbins, even if accurate name-calling is perfectly justified, would have misused his license -- which he has certainly done if he put down those scholars you named.

However, I am just curious what people think about the principle he is espousing, and his arguments for it. The arguments seem somewhat sound, but practically and intuitively the conclusions are wanting. It just seems right to me that calling a Roman Catholic a Catholic rather than a papist or Romanist would serve better in their conversion. There is so much emotionally involved in conversion, and it is very difficult to help people understand the Gospel while simultaneously eviscerating them for their beliefs. I guess name-calling can function in extreme circumstances, e.g. if someone is corrupting an entire city in a very well-mannered way and needs to know that he is absolutely evil and vile -- but that just doesn't happen very much.