Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Someone in a debate that I happened across asks:

"...does [NT] Wright here or elsewhere unambiguously affirm that the penalty paid by Christ is the perfect, complete atoning sacrifice as payment of the penalty of the law, such that at the point of faith the believer is forever united to Christ, forever saved and forgiven, never again, in any way, to be subject to God’s wrath, all apart from any future moral or sacramental work? Can or does Wright unequivocally affirm a distinctly Reformed view of the sufficiency and efficiency of Christ’s penal substitutionary sacrifice?"

If that's how being Reformed requires me to use the words 'faith', 'believer', and the phrase 'forever united to Christ', then I'm renouncing a Reformed identity. 'Cause that may be Reformed systematic theology, but it ain't biblical usage. And I will NOT be held to ransom by the arrogance of a bankrupt tradition which thinks its own polemical usage trumps original meaning. For, at that point, anything's possible. The prophets and apostles are made whores to 21st century sectarian agendas.

Sometimes I detest what's become of the modern church - or at least, stupid protestants. Up with alternative movements, I say.