A lot of the time, when I’m debating the Federal Vision issues, labels like Wilsonite, Shepherdite, or whatever are tossed out. And I find it terribly annoying and uncharitable. It does nothing to help the discussion when such terms are used, particularly when they are obviously used in a pejorative manner.

But I’m even more bothered when “my side” starts doing the same thing.

Yesterday morning, when I awoke, I was SOO tired. I just couldn’t believe it. Ashley was crying, so I went and picked her up and brought her back to our bed. I have a nice little program when she’s fussy in the morning. I go get her out of her crib, so her crying doesn’t wake Geneva (who shares the room). I plop Ashley down in our bed, she cuddles up to Megan, and then I go get ready for work. When I return 15 or 20 minutes later, Ashley is sound asleep, and I can safely extract her from our bed, and reinsert her into her own.

But yesterday was different. After I put her in our bed I just couldn’t get moving. Ashley, though, did her part just fine. I sat on the bed for several minutes, trying to shake it off and start my day. But I could barely hold my eyes open. I wondered to myself, “Man, why I am I so tired?”. Then, it all came together when I glanced at the clock. It was one o’clock in the morning. “Oooh” I thought. “That’s nice”.

In his chapter in When Shall These Things Be?, Keith Mathison writes,

In order to understand the eschatological time texts of the New Testament, it is important to understand their biblical context. We cannot simply remove a few isolated verses from their broader biblical context, interpret them apart from that context, and then use them as a hermeneutical grid through wich we force the remainder of Scripture. The eschatological time texts of the New Testament do not exist in a vacuum. We must examine these texts within the broader eschatological framework of the New Testament.

When I read that, I was struck at how applicable the principle is to the current ‘Auburn Avenue Controversy’.

Doug Phillips says on his blog,

Speaking of confused logic, have you noticed that the Christians who squawk and protest most loudly that they have discovered an “enlightened spirit of catholicity” that corrects the “excesses” of that great cloud of Reformation witnesses (including the hard talking, sound thinking Separatists, Puritans, Pilgrims, etc., who helped to found America) have anything but a spirit of catholicity when it comes to talking about their Reformed and credo-Baptist brethren. For many of these dear confused brothers “Baptist” and “Anabaptist” are synonymns, and both terms are the equivilent of a Christian swear word.

But, really, does he get it? This is probably the most common problem for the ‘reformed catholic’ guys. Because they emphasize christian catholicity and unity, it is assumed that they think everything is peachy keen. Because Baptists are members of Christs one, holy, catholic, apostolic body, it is assumed that nothing can be said about their errors. But that (obviously) is not the case. Baptists are our brothers. But they also are in error. Serious error, if you ask me. And those errors are pointed out and argued against. And that does nothing to diminish the primary goal of recognizing the catholic church as the catholic church.

It’s disheartening when these men that are leaders just don’t get it.