joshuabgood wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 8:51 am
Judas Maccabeus wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 8:37 am
jahertz wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 7:53 pm
Thank you for the quote, I love it.
And if I call you Reformed in the future, I'll do my best to ensure my audience knows it's done without your consent.
If you call me “reformed” I will expect you to justify it through actual reformed doctrinal sources. I doubt you are familiar with any of them.
I wouldn't call you Reformed, and even if I thought you were, I would still consider you a brother in Christ
. That said, the Reformed and protestant influence on SOT seems pretty clear to me. They regularly source articles from writers of these persuasions and the language used is also familiarly of this persuasion. The editor and assistant editor are influential theological voices at EBI where an anchor theological text is (or at least publicly was) Wayne Grudems Systematic Theology.
Still I would agree there are some significant differences between Grudem/Piper and SOT but the influence seems to be there to some of us.
Toccoa Falls college used Grudem’s book while my oldest daughter was there. I would hardly call them reformed. The unfortunate fact is, that most of the systematic theology book available are written by reformed authors, they seem to be quite good at it. When I was in grad. school, we used Erickson, who is also reformed, but not as much so as Grudem. The only completely non reformed systematic theology I have on my shelf is Pardington’s outline studies. It is just difficult to source a textbook for systematic theology, and Grudem is likely the best out there. I in fact own a copy, that I have had since school. I put it between Kauffman’s “Docterines of the Bible” and Pardington just for effect.
Calling me reformed is a bit ironic. Reformed University Fellowship wanted to merge with the Chinese ministry I taught for for 12 years. The condition-while not explicitly spelled out, my wife, myself, and one of the leaders, who was Grace Brethren had to go. We were unacceptable to them. Merger did not happen, in reality my suspicion was they were more interested in our building than us.
So people who are really reformed, rejected me as anti-reformed, what basis does anyone who is not reformed have to call me reformed? I could not and would not affirm any of their doctrinal formations. I think this has become a pejorative that people thoughtlessly throw around, without understanding how it is defined by those who have the right to define it.