you wrote:
“The statements are clearly contrary to the Gospel. Shall we say the authors are outside the faith? I would want more evidence.”

But the evidence for regarding someone as a fellow believer is (in part) their profession (“mouth-confession”) of the Gospel. If they profess a false gospel, we cannot see their hearts and know that they are regenerate believers, nor defer to wishful thinking.

We can grant the possibility that a regenerate believer has a confused and false profession of the gospel. But their false profession is sufficient evidence for (gospel confessing) church to tell them that what they profess is a false gospel, and if they truly believe it then they do not believe the true gospel.

Wouldn’t you agree? If not, why?
Thanks.
–Gregory

I too have been rather shocked by certain statements I’ve heard from OP pastors regarding sanctification and salvation. They seem to come from people of a more Postmil, theonomic persuasion, however. Not necessarily, but that’s the general trend I’ve noticed. Also, certain people who are heavily into the Puritans tend to maintain almost a works-based righteousness as a knee-jerk reaction to the evangelicalism they’ve been exposed to in the past. I hope I’m not saying anything too controversial, but I’ve always thought that part of salvation was being progressively sanctified to the image of Christ. Isn’t this a work of God as well?

good post. i was caught off guard to see your reference to something i don’t recall saying. but i take your word for it, since this is a subject i have often struggled with and wondered about.

your post is helpful, especially this: “My thoughts on this sort of thing remain the same when talking about the Roman Catholic church. I can’t agree not to evangelize Catholics as those who signed the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document did. In the same way, I can’t agree not to evangelize Reformed Christians in error-filled congregations, even if those congregations are in my own or a sister denomination.”

i have often asked the following question and never really seem to get a good answer: “why are those evangelicals who reject our forms of unity so often referred to as ‘brothers and sisters’ and roman catholics never seem to enjoy such courtesy and are simply called roman catholics as if they are from another whole religion?”

my own hunch as i live and move amongst so many evangelicals is that they seem to operate from the “ritual and relgion bad” MO and we reformed, inasmuch as we have assimilated to evangelicalism like the new-born chick who watches the car and thinks she’s a car, then agree that “ritual and religion” are somehow bad. i think it’s based upon a lot of high church versus low church templates, especially when good “Roman Catholics read the Bible (after Vatican II), that they really do love Jesus, that they invented the quiet time; when they learn that the papal legate to the evangelicals testifies that he had a born-again experience in the 1970s” (per scott clark). an evangy family member recently gasped and spit about another family member having married a devout RC. when i asked what the problem was it nothing to do with anything substantive or material but was solely based upon prejudice and ignorance.

thanks for the good words.

with an unfurled brow,

zrim