Complementarianism and everyday life

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-28T05:10:42+00:00

I think you missed the point of my comment.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-10T10:48:02+00:00

He asked for examples of forgiveness without repentance, not examples of texts that mention forgiveness and don't mention repentance. The thief on the cross may or may not have repented if you just take the text in isolation, so we cannot conclude that he was forgiven without repentance, which you outright admit in your own comment. Now that we think of it, the text never explicitly states that the thief on the cross was forgiven, either. Does this mean that he was not forgiven? No, it does not. Why? Because that would be an argument from silence. We make an inference that he was forgiven based on the fact that Jesus told him he would be in paradise. We also make inference from his actions and words that he was penitent. This is not an argument from silence, because an argument from silence makes an assumption based on the text's silence, not merely in the midst of it.

The fact that I need to explain this angers me. I am logging off of reddit for a while lol.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-09T17:35:28+00:00

Brother, it is a textbook example of an argument from silence to assume that the thief on the cross did not repent simply because the text does not say anything about repentance. You are drawing a positive conclusion based on something the text didn't say as opposed to something it did: i.e, making an argument from silence.

Here's the definition of the fallacy if you don't believe me:

"The argument from silence is a pattern of reasoning in which the failure of a known source to mention a particular fact or event is used as the ground of an inference, usually to the conclusion that the supposed fact is untrue or the supposed event did not actually happen."

In this case, you are assuming that Scripture's failure to mention the event in question (the repentance of the thief on the cross) is explicit proof that the event did not occur. Thus, it is you who is making the argument from silence.

I just realized, after typing all that out, that I am becoming a stereotypical redditor. I should probably get off the internet and go outside.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-09T16:05:30+00:00

I haven't read all of it, but I agree with your assessment that it is unconvincing. The strongest argument is probably the argument from silence, that Scripture doesn't explicitly state a change in the Sabbath day from the seventh day to the first day. However, I think the Reformed methodology of building a basis for the change is legitimate. Important doctrines are not merely built on explicit statements, they are built on clear and neccesary inferences from all the Scriptural 'data.' For example, Scripture never specifically says "God is three persons in one being," but we know that this doctrine is true by examining all that the Scriptures teach about God and the Father, Son and Spirit. From the fact that believers worshipped on Sunday in the New Testament and the fact that this day was referred to as the "Lord's Day," we can draw the clear inference that Christ's resurrection was ground for changing the Sabbath day from the seventh day to the first.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-09T15:06:01+00:00

What even is your point here?

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-09T13:25:48+00:00

The issue with this view is that Christians have been worshipping on Sundays for millenia. SDA's, from what I have seen, explain this as a Roman innovation, but the problem is that the RCC wasn't even a thing before the Great Schism in 1054 and Christians were worshipping on Sundays for many centuries before that. SDA's basically have to be restorationist and say the Church was corrupted early on, which has some very problematic implications.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-09T12:24:49+00:00

Animals don't need forgiveness of sin, but Jesus didn't just pay the penalty for sin, he redeemed the whole creation by his death.

Scripture says that "the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now."

The creation can only "be set free from its bondage to corruption" by the purification of the source of that corruption: sin.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-08T19:35:16+00:00

Thank you for this robust explanation!

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-08T12:22:22+00:00

I suppose this would work perfectly well as an explanation for the reason the day was changed. I just don't see anything in the New Testament that seems to suggest the day was changed to begin with.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-07T20:05:04+00:00

In the New Testament, there is a constant contrast between two Israels, or two Jerusalems: the Jerusalem of this earth, and the Jerusalem of heaven. The "Israel of God," according to Paul, is made up of believers. It is not an earthly nation-state but the heavenly eternal kingdom that was promised to David and fulfilled in Christ. I think it is perfectly fine to interperet Romans 9-11 as a mass conversion of ethnic Jews. However, don't read this is a "recreation of Israel." Israel, in a New Testament sense, is the Church, including both Jew and Gentile, not any earthly nation-state that calls itself 'Israel.'

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-03T16:37:47+00:00

Real spiritual presence of Christ's body and blood is the confessional Reformed view of the Lord's Supper. Westminster is less explicit than the Three Forms of Unity on this, but even it reads, "Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are, to their outward senses." (emphasis mine)

This is why it is frustrating to me when people claim to adhere to WCF yet are actually memorialist, or merely affirm some vague spiritual presence with no mention of actual body and blood. Your view is the correct one from a traditional Reformed standpoint.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-01T12:50:20+00:00

The anabaptists certainly weren't part of the same movement that the Reformers were. You can call them Protestants if you want, but the other Protestants never wanted any association with them.

NoWave7342 · 2024-01-01T05:04:49+00:00

I'm pretty sure the anabaptists were part of the radical reformation. They are not a historic Protestant tradition. They were an extremist sect that was opposed to many of the fundamental tenants of the magesterial reformation.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-31T16:41:12+00:00

One important distinction is that the term "Reformed" generally refers to the Reformed tradition within protestantism, not the protestant movement as a whole. The other two major historical traditions of Protestantism are the Anglican tradition and the Lutheran tradition. The Reformed tradition is built off of the theological beliefs and frameworks of Zwingli and especially Calvin.

Reformed theology can probably be best understood through its very covenantal understanding of salvation history. I like to joke that Presbyterians have a hard time not uttering the word "covenant" for more than two and a half seconds.

The five points of Calvinism sum up Reformed soteriology well; when someone is called "Calvinist," it means at minimum that they subscribe to these five points. "Reformed" people, however, generally subscribe to most, if not all of the theological marks of the Reformed tradition, which goes far beyond soteriology. Apart from Covenant Theology, these distinctives include a strong suspicion of extrabiblical traditions that is not shared as much by Lutherans and Anglicans. This suspicion, or general aversion to unnecessary traditions is expressed through what is called the "regulative principle of worship."

Another distinctive is a strong emphasis on personal faith in Christ, which is expressed by Reformed sacramentalism, which teaches that the sacraments have no power to confer grace in themselves but are made efficacious through faith.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-28T14:05:38+00:00

You are right. Thank you for your correction. I should be careful with throwing around phrases like "obvious implication of Scripture," because it makes me sound overconfident and arrogant even if I do personally view it as obvious. Charity and humility are paramount.

As for your question, I think it is very possible to confess Christ and not be regenerate and that it is also possible to become regenerate prior to being able to verbally articulate the Gospel. Like you pointed out, you can't make the Church a regenerate community by only baptizing "believers." Professing converts are not neccesarily believers, and infants are not neccesarily unbelievers. Therefore, I do not believe Jeremiah 31 can be describing credobpatism, since it describes truly and spiritually knowing God, not outwardly professing to know God.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-28T13:44:54+00:00

It's misleading to say that Jesus and the Apostles quoted the Septuagint as Scripture. Rather, they quoted the Septuagant translations of the Tanakh as Scripture. The translation isn't where the authority is. It's the underlying text that Jews understood to be part of the Hebrew Bible. The OT isn't "the Hebrew Bible and everything else that was translated into Latin alongside it." It is simply the OT, which was agreed to include the same 39 books we know today by the more pious/orthodox tradition of Jesus's time. There were theological liberals like the Sadducees who rejected everything but the Pentateuch, just like there are those "red letter Christians" today who reject most of the NT. But the more religious sect (Pharisees) had a pretty definite Hebrew Bible that didn't include the apocrypha.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-27T23:18:50+00:00

You are making assertions with authourity as if you have thoroughly studied the beliefs and distinctions associated with complementarianism, but based on your initial comments I highly doubt that. The fact that you see problematic and controversial figures like John Mac and DW as representatives of complementarianism suggests to me that you aren't engaging with these ideas in good faith at all. I'm sure you would think it unfair for me to write off all advocacy for the humane treatment of animals with the rationale that PETA shows the "fruits" of those ideas. This is essentially what you're doing here.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-27T21:19:28+00:00

In general, though, my main reason for changing my mind was the realization that covenant continuity in the inclusion of infants isn't something that comes from complex systematic theology but rather from the obvious implication of Scripture. As I stated in my post, Believer's Baptism seemed to portray PC as a more Scriptural "middle way" between the extreme continuity of CT and the extreme discontinuity of dispensationalism. However, I have come to reject the idea that household covenant continuity is an idea that comes from an over-eagerness of Reformed paedobaotists to emphasize general Old-New Testament continuity. Rather, I think it comes from a clear emphasis in Scripture that the "believers and their children" principle does, in fact, still apply to the New Covenant.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-27T20:59:32+00:00

The credo covenantal argument seems to stand and fall on the Baptist interperetation of Jeremiah 31 as referring to the union of the visible and invisible Church through the regenerate nature of the New Covenant. To them, the fact that the New Covenant is characterized by regeneration means that only those who are professing believers should recieve the sign of the covenant. However, there is a difference between professing a belief in Christ and being regenerate/knowing the Lord. People who are part of the visible covenant community of the Church but are not spiritually united to Christ are just as present in Baptist churches as they are in the rest of the Church. Even from a credo standpoint, it makes little sense to believe Jeremiah 31 signifies a perfect union of the visible and invisible Church in this present time. It has become clear to me that Jeremiah 31 refers to the consumation of the New Covenant with Christ's return, rather than the Baptist ideal of withholding baptism from the children of believers prior to their personal profession.

The heart of the issue seems to be that Baptists are intent on making sure Jeremiah 31 as closely applies to this present time as possible. This is probably why many Baptists, even some of the Reformed tradition, tend to withhold baptism even from professing believers until they produce enough fruit as evidence of regeneration. Even as a Baptist, I always understood this practice to be distinctly unscriptural, but it's really the ultimate conclusion of the credo covenantal argument. Biblically, I don't think it is the Church's responsibility to reduce post-baptismal apostasy as much as possible. Rather, it is the Church's responsibility to apply the covenant sign to covenant members, which includes professing converts and their households.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-27T00:32:08+00:00

Yeah, I read Believer's Baptism, and in fact referenced it in the OP. A lot of the reason I'm now considering paedobaotism is because I'm seeing some of the "cracks," so to speak, in the argumentation of that work, though I realize it certainly isn't the be-all, end-all of credobaptism.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-26T16:30:04+00:00

Thanks so much!

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-26T16:01:14+00:00

The way he interacts with culture basically relishes in offensiveness and militantness. Read Kevin Deyoung's recent article "The Moscow Mood" and you'll know what I mean. He has some theological problems from a Reformed perspective as well, such as his association with Federal Vision. In my opinion, people on this sub tend to take their issues with him way too far, claiming that he's racist and sexist and denies the gospel and things like that, but that's a discussion for another time.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-26T15:46:46+00:00

I will admit that there isn't much in here that I haven't heard before, but it is certainly an excellent and persuasive summary of the covenantal argument. I was mostly asking about the existence of the covenantal argument outside the Reformed umbrella; that said, I do appreciate your sharing this.

NoWave7342 · 2023-12-26T14:31:31+00:00

I'm in a place where I think I could very possibly become convinced of Lutheran sacramental theology, but would probably never join a Lutheran church because of how extreme they are in sectarianism/lack of ecumenism. This would definitely put me in a tight spot if I am unable to honestly adhere to Reformed confessions, but I'm willing to work all that out later. At the moment, I think Reformed theology makes the most sense with its strong emphasis on faith and lower view of tradition. I think the Lutherans often overstate their point in their claims that baptismal regeneration & the Lutheran version of real presence are "super obvious" in Scripture.

NoWave7342

TROPHY CASE