Hob's SemBlog

Notes, comments, thoughts on my studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
so my friends/family/supporters/whoever can keep tabs on my progress, and nag me to keep on top of things.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Giving Up the Key to a True Redemption

Going to post a few great passages from some of my Presbyterian History texts...

Speaking of the immediate fall-out of the acceptance of practical Amyrauldian in the United Secession Synods in Scotland, mid-1800's:

New Light was coming nearer the citadel of the Faith in its disintegrating results. At this point, among a considerable section of professed Evangelicals, the key that admitted to the fortress of a true and efficacious Redemption was given up; and this had a close relation to practical methods in preaching and pressing home the Gospel message. It meant a new approach to the case of the anxious sinner when he was told that our Lord had died for him, and that he must right off receive this as the good news of salvation. This method of approach to him hid from the enquirer that when it said that the Saviour had died for him it might prove that He had died either in vain, or with no intention to effect his salvation. For the Universal Redemption which it taught was on its own showing a Redemption that did not secure life. In this respect the method of treating the anxious played with the use of deceitful terms, and did not compare well with the methods that had been formerly in use. This older method told the sinner of a Saviour Who had died to save His chosen and called ones, and Who was now calling and inviting him to make proof of His saving power by talking Himself as the Lord his Righteousness, and so sheltering under the covert of His sacrifice and the shield of His intercession. The older Calvinism did not seek to assure the sinner that Christ had died his death until he a had first, in obedience of faith, closed with Him as a Saviour in His office as Mediator. It could, as The Marrow put it, tell him that Christ, Who died the Just for the unjust, was his for the taking, and that when he took this Christ as his own, he was in doing so guilty of no presumption. Methods that were borrowed from organised, almost mechanised American Revivalism began to be so common in dealing with enquirers for salvation that they came to be looked upon as part and parcel of aggressive Gospel work.
--John McLeod, Scottish Theology in Relation to Church History, p.244.

Tell me this isn't incredibly relevant today. This summary of the presentation from The Marrow is just perfect.

H. C. jotted this down on 2:17 PM. (( 2:17 PM
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