Friday, April 3, 2009

We have seen the enemy, and he is us

Ordained Servant is the OPC's journal for, well, ordained officers. It appears online, with an annual print edition. This month, Carl Trueman, a professor of Church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, uses a review of David Wells' The Courage to be Protestant as an occasion to consider, with an impressive amount of historical and sociological insight, the huge challenges facing any attempt to rebuild a robust Church life in the midst of America's individualistic and capitalistic culture.

The short version: Because conservative presbyterians have chosen to become conservative presbyterians, they may be the greatest obstacle to rebuilding confessional presbyterianism. "There is nobody less likely to refuse to meet with the elders, in my experience, than the hardline confessionalist whose monopolistic possession of the truth, combined with an oh-so-sensitive conscience and a Luther complex, places him above the reach of ordinary church courts."

The long version: http://www.opc.org/os9.html?article_id=147

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