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I think we're talking past each other to a certain extent. The PCUSA has not held to the WCF in any meaningful sense in decades, and not formally since at least 1967. They are not included in Dr. Clark's definition of Reformed. Identifying them as Reformed in anything but a historical sense makes about as much sense as saying Robert Schuller is an example of a Reformed minister (he was and perhaps still is RCA.)
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Chris, thanks for you reply. I ALWAYS enjoy interacting with you. What you see as talking past each other, I label the limitations of this format. No one has time to clarify what they or the other person means. We tend to run on without interacting.
Yes, I know that PCUSA is no longer Reformed in the sense that you and Dr. Clark are using it. Man, they aren't even Calvinistic as I use it!!! However, they would probably still think that they are and that you all are just a foolish hangover from the past, some folks stuck on the errors of modernity with a brittle hermeneutic. If they were drawing the circle, the Reformed Community would probably include ALL of the presbyterian polity denominations from left to right. Like you, they would not consider baptists Reformed which is OK by me, I don't consider most of them confessional either.
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Lumping in all Presbyterians together may make sense to someone in the mainline (which would include the SBC although it is generally far better in upholding the authority of the Bible than the PCUSA or RCA) or someone in the world, but it isn't applicable to anyone who is in a separatist denomination like the PCA, OPC or the URCNA, as well as the Calvinistic Baptist groups like ARBCA, FIRE, etc.
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Actually mainline includes, by general but not unanimous usage, the seven "sisters" of the mainline: ABCUSA, Disciples, ECUSA, ELCA, UMC, PCUSA, and UCC. SBC has always been quite sectarian and considered themselves neither mainline nor evangelical but Babptist (spelling intended).
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We have more in common with each other than you do with Campolo and we do with Rogers because we share a common commitment to the authority of the Bible as well as to our respective confessions.
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Agreed! Campolo is off the reservation among the conservative ABCers, but the hierarchy just loves him. When I had Rogers in seminary, he was so busy running away from confessional presbyterianism, that I learned very little about what you all believe. For Rogers, Francis Schaeffer (considerably more popular back in the 70s than now) was a cuss word (he even had a case study in his classes to trash the guy) as were any people who held to the inerrancy of the Bible. One of my other "Reformed"-and-proud-of-it profs, took great delight in proving that the Bible was full of errors.
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One reason why the term Reformed has been defined down is because even conservatives of that day tended to deemphasize the Confessions and their denominational distinctives and emphasized things like the five fundamentals.
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Agreed again. It had a salutary effect in that it made common cause among evangelicals against modernist liberalism in the seminaries, pulpits, and denominational headquarters. But, as you indicate, it opened the door for an incredible dumbing down of the faith, the triumph of latitudinarian evangelicalism (cf. Osteen), and the rise of charismatic de-emphasis upon doctrine (cf. the "doctrine divides, experience unites" mantra in the 70s).
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Another factor is that Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and the Banner of Truth were instrumental in the revival of the Doctrines of Grace over the past 50 years. For that we are very thankful. However, they tended to deemphasize ecclesiology and other divisive issues if not ignore them altogether, so the result is people now thinking that someone is Reformed if they simply agree with the Five Points.
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I do not dispute your perspective but would broaden it a bit to include the work of Packer, Piper, and Sproul. The generic popularity of these three men near the end of the century had far more effect (IMO) in the U.S. than even Lloyd-Jones. And, maybe because Packer is Anglican, he doesn't discuss ecclesiology much; Piper has always been a baptist and his books have been amazingly popular in jump-starting a reinvestigation of Calvinism among young evangelicals; and while Sproul makes no bones about his paedo-baptist convictions, his listening/reading audience consists of an awful lot of mainstream evangelicals from free church backgrounds.
If I have learned anything in my more than three decades of ministry, it is to conclude that the doctrine of inerrancy is not sufficient. Without adding to it the sturdy structure of a comprehensive theological framing and the insulation and walls of confessional orthodoxy maintained strictly, we will (both the Reformed and the broadly evangelical) inevitably drift into error, then heresy. The path of the majority of presbyterians and now (increasingly) of the broad evangelicals has disturbed, disgusted, and depressed me.
I have already given up on my former mainline denomination. My efforts now are directed toward promoting confessionalism with integrity among baptists in my circles of influence.