What is the Church, anyway? Aren't you just being an ecclesial consumerist, in any case, deciding what the "Church" believes and how to harmonize the wildly disparate theologies of whatever "reformers" you happen to prefer? Just asking.
That's what Andrew was talking about. Well, he was pointing out the ambiguity introduced by Sola Scriptura, and what it does to the visible institutions of theological control when the "Church" becomes fundamentally invisible. The trial wasn't about Leithart at all; it's just a little picture of what happens when the real arbiter (Leithart) of what Scripture says collides with the visible institutions who pretend to be that arbiter. As Andrew Preslar had written elsewhere, the other name of this individualism is "ecclesial fallibility." You have to replace ecclesial infallibity with personal interpretive infallibility (fundamentalism) or you end up in agnosticism. Stellman took great pains to keep the focus on Leithart's distance from the Westminster Standards, and not the much harder--that is, impossible--question of what Scripture says, at least in a formally sufficient sense. But just because you choose to assume the Standards teach what the Scriptures teach doesn't mean that question goes away.
The only way you remain a "creedal Protestant" is with an ad hoc individualist approach to history, and failing to properly contextualize the Christological heart of the whole thing: the first two ecumenical councils. Whether that is culpable ignorance is up to your conscience.
That's what Andrew was talking about. Well, he was pointing out the ambiguity introduced by Sola Scriptura, and what it does to the visible institutions of theological control when the "Church" becomes fundamentally invisible. The trial wasn't about Leithart at all; it's just a little picture of what happens when the real arbiter (Leithart) of what Scripture says collides with the visible institutions who pretend to be that arbiter. As Andrew Preslar had written elsewhere, the other name of this individualism is "ecclesial fallibility." You have to replace ecclesial infallibity with personal interpretive infallibility (fundamentalism) or you end up in agnosticism. Stellman took great pains to keep the focus on Leithart's distance from the Westminster Standards, and not the much harder--that is, impossible--question of what Scripture says, at least in a formally sufficient sense. But just because you choose to assume the Standards teach what the Scriptures teach doesn't mean that question goes away.
The only way you remain a "creedal Protestant" is with an ad hoc individualist approach to history, and failing to properly contextualize the Christological heart of the whole thing: the first two ecumenical councils. Whether that is culpable ignorance is up to your conscience.
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