Calling for a Return to the Doctrinal Ideals and Kingdom Ethics of the First Reformation
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/living-wonder/
I rather enjoyed reading this review though I have not decided whether I will pick up Dreher's book. The work in question is Rod Dreher's 'Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age'. I found myself disagreeing with both Dreher and Darville the reviewer, but there's a great deal of food for thought.
Dolezal's admission of mutabilist language being present in the text and his resort to nonliteral, accommodationist, and anthropomorphic arguments in order to fit the language of Scripture into his theological grid has the potential if not the tendency to generate more problems than it solves. Once again, one is driven to think of the patterns exhibited in historical theology and the role such 'rationalist' systems-driven thinking has played. The road from rationalist scholasticism to theological liberalism is in fact a short one. The dynamics of Scripture don't lend themselves to such rigid constructions and there's a tendency (even a drive) to refine and ultimately compress both Trinitarianism and the hypostatic union into ever monistic and more coherent frameworks. It begins innocently enough, pushing to the edge of orthodoxy. But in another generation it's redefined and in another lost altogether.
I recently had a nice long chat with an Anglo-Catholic priest and we discussed the issue of authority and how their understanding differs from Rome and its Magisterium, from the models that seek to place Scripture, Reason, and Tradition on par, and Protestant understandings of Sola Scriptura.
Driving home from a rather High-Church Anglican service, I reflected on the many different understandings of worship and the relationship (if any) between our service and the celestial or heavenly realm.
Confessionalists and Evangelicals, (the two dominate groups in my Judah- Southern Kingdom analogy) don’t quote their own prophets as do the Charismatics but they do rely on alternate word-authorities. Evangelicals frequently quote the Founding Fathers or the founding documents treating such words as inspired or the very least deutero-canonical.
---
Over the years I have on occasion appealed to something I call the Northern Kingdom Analogy. The New Testament repeatedly reminds us that the Old Testament serves as an example. There were false prophets among them just as there will be among us. In Christ, we participated in the same events, and partake of the same spiritual meat and drink. The typology is relevant as well, and especially so when one understands Revelation provides a multi-faceted view of Church History cast in Old Testament forms and symbolism. Throughout the epistles, but especially in Jude and Revelation, there’s a direct analogy to Old Testament antecedents.
One could say (given all that has been argued here) that I might be a prime candidate for swimming the Tiber (or Crossing the Bosphorus) and I have been forced to acknowledge the weight of such arguments and to a degree I can understand why many have abandoned the Reformation (and especially Evangelicalism) for Rome or Constantinople. But this is folly of an even greater magnitude as Rome and Constantinople are false systems – false and counterfeit manifestations of Christianity. This doesn't mean that every last thing Rome holds to or proclaims is wrong – as even the heirs of the sixteenth century Reformation will acknowledge, though there is little agreement as to what that all means. Those who defect to Rome have already embraced erroneous assumptions and then when the weight of everything is else is factored in – they make the perilous move and thinking they do Christ service, they join with His enemies. Unlike most contemporary Evangelicals, I still argue that Roman Catholicism is antichrist and at least a manifestation or a component of the Whore-Beast imagery of New Testament prophecy.
This article was sent to me accompanied by some follow-up
questions. It's actually by an Eastern Orthodox cleric and I must say I was
pleased to read it.
For the most part I agree with was said – with a few
qualifications.
Under the banner of co-belligerence, Evangelicals continue to deepen their ties to Roman Catholicism and openly work alongside elements within its larger order in pursuit of their political goals and aspirations. As Catholicism represents a spectrum every bit as broad as what is found under the definition of 'Protestantism', it is the Traditionalist Catholics (so-called) who are the natural allies of the Evangelical sphere – as they too labour to turn back the cultural clock. And while their conceptions of 'Christian America' or Christendom are different, they are united with Evangelicals in opposing secular humanism.