Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God > Status Update

"The logical "must" indicates a moral necesity. To say that someone "must" accept a conclusion is to say that he ought to accept it, that he has an obligation to accept it. The obligation is to believe in the fullest sense—to accept it as authority, to bring all the rest of life into conformity to that belief. Why should we urge such a moral obligation to believe upon people who in one sense believe already? Because as Romans 1 teaches with respect to the knowledge of God, people often ''suppress" their knowledge of a logical conclusion; or they believe it but refuse to admit it; or they believe it, but refuse to act accordingly; or they believe it, but also believe other things inconsistent with it that compete for their loyalty.

Thus we can see that logical implication is not a religiously neutral something. It is dependent on ethical values, which ultimately are religious values. Logical necessity can be understood as a form of ethical necessity, which is ultimately a religious necessity. Logic, therefore, can be viewed as a brand of ethics. But the only true ethical values are those revealed to us by God. Therefore, logic presupposes Christianity."

"It often comes as an exciting discovery that doctrines that seem at first glance to be opposed are actually complementary, if not actually dependent one on another. For Calvinists, for example, divine sovereignty and human freedom are examples of that sort of dependence and complementarity. Although at first glance those doctrines appear to be opposed to one another, a closer look shows that without divine sovereignty there would be no meaning in human life and therefore no meaningful form of freedom. And if our concern for freedom is essentially a concern to maintain human ethical responsibility, we should observe that divine sovereignty is the source of human responsibility. Because the sovereign Lord is the cause of and authority over human responsibility, we can say that God's sovereignty-His absolute lordship-establishes human responsibility. Thus Scripture often places the two doctrines side by side, with no embar- rassment or sense of impropriety whatsoever (cf. Acts 2:23; 4:27f.; Phil. 2:12f.). Human responsibility exists not "in spite of" but "because of" God's sovereignty. Not only are the two compatible; they require each other."

"An obvious example of establishing who has the "burden of proof" is infant baptism. Because the New Testament is relatively silent on this question, we are faced with two alternative approaches. We can assume continuity with the Old Testament principle of administering the sign of the covenant to children, unless New Testament evidence directs us otherwise, and this is the paedobaptist approach. Or we can assume that only adult believers are to be baptized, unless there is New Testament evidence to the contrary, and this is the antipaedobaptist (= "baptist") approach. On the first approach, the burden of proof is on the baptist to show New Testament evidence against infant baptism. On the second approach, the burden of proof is on the paedobaptist to show New Testament evidence for it. In this case, determining the burden of proof pretty much decides the question, since there is little explicit New Testament evidence on either side and since the two parties are pretty much agreed on the Old Testament data. It seems to me that the first approach is correct: the church of the New Testament is essentially the same as the church of the Old. When first-century Jews heard Peter say "The promise is to you and to your children" (Acts 2:39) and when people were baptized by households, surely, it seems to me, they would have taken these words as indications of continuity with Old Testament covenant thinking. A man upon conversion brings his family with him, and the sign of the covenant is administered to all. It is possible that this system may have changed with the transition to the New Covenant, but if such a change has taken place, baptists must demonstrate this."

Andrew: This was a strong argument in my own journey. If children are included in every single one of the major Covenants between God and man in the Old Testament including Abraham’s and Israel's (and they were), and if the Church is the New Israel and the rightful children of Abraham (which it should be downright obvious that it is), then the burden of proof is on the Baptists (the antipaedobaptists) to show clear evidence that this clear pattern changed. If the response is, "But the New Covenant is entered by demonstrated faith!" So was Abraham’s (Rom 4), if the answer is "But the Old Covenant was material, but the New Covenant is spiritual." That is gnostic/pseudo-marcionite.

"Threat of force (also known as ad baculum) is a specific form of the fallacy of irrelevance described above and of the argument ad hominem which we will discuss next. It has a specific thrust that deserves to be discussed separately. This sort of argument says, "Accept this conclusion, or else something bad will happen to you." In politics it often takes the form, "Vote for this legislation, or my group won't support you for re-election." In orthodox theology, the equivalent threat is that of church discipline. It might seem that this type of argument is rare in liberal circles, but that is not the case. In liberal theological circles the threat of academic ostracization is strong. Those who stray from fashionable liberalism often find themselves denied teaching positions, tenure, and opportunities to publish. When Bultmann declared that modern men ''cannot believe in the miraculous," he was expressing his version of the rules of the liberal theological game. Those who break those rules do not find peer approval. It is important to recognize that. Often it is claimed that people become liberal out of "intellectual honesty,'' out of a desire to formulate their honest convictions apart from the heavy pressures of tradition and discipline. But that claim must be questioned. The traditions of the liberal academic establishment are every bit as narrow and coercive as is church discipline within orthodoxy."

Andrew: We learn what is most important to a church not by what they say, but what they are willing to fight against and separate over. What are they actually disciplining members for? And keep in mind, all churches practice discipline of some kind. Discipline for churches that don't actively practice Matthew 18 often takes the unbiblical forms of ostracization, black-listing, and gossip/slander. If they won't openly send you out the front door, they'll find a way to usher you quietly out the back.