If I might offer my services as a translator for a moment . . .
Darryl, when Jim says he is “unexcited” about being Reformed, you need to also hear that he is unexcited in the same ways, and to the same extent, about being FV. When he says he is excited about Jesus and the Bible, you need to realize that he is not intending to access these directly, thus bypassing all hermeneutical issues and situational perspectives. Neither is he intending to by-pass subscriptional vows. And last, throw in the fact that many of the FV men, for the last few years, have been pummeled with vague approximations of the Westminster Confession, which has taken some of the luster off. I don’t think this negative reaction is necessary, because we have actually been beat up, not by the Westminster Confession, but by Westminster’s stunt double.
Jim, when Darryl says that he wants to stay put in the confessional river, this does not mean he is tied to the dock. He is willing to hear us out, proceeding slowly. After all, he is talking to us. His hesitancy about clambering into the FV barrel to go over the falls with us is understandable, but his main concern is to make sure we stay in this river. That does not mean that he wants simply to float in the Reformed pond.
To all, anybody who does not realize that someone could take the recently released Joint Federal Vision Statement, adopt it as a subordinate standard for their church or churches, and two hundred years from now being exhibiting all the same reactions and arguments that are being offered now by the TRs in defense of the Westminster Standards simply does not understand human nature and the way human history works.
